Reply to 2023-24 Course catalog

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Precalc Trig Honors was a hard class. I wonder if this will be easier or not.[/quote]
AP Precalculus is no where near as rigorous as Precalculus Trig Honors. AP Precalculus was designed for kids who take Algebra 1 in 9th grade who won't get to calculus in high school; this gives them a credit that they could use at two-year colleges and some four-year colleges to meet their math requirements. It is not designed as a rigorous preparation for calculus.

The AP Precalculus exam does not cover parametric equations, conic sections, vectors, or matrices. FCPS lists these topics as included in their AP Precalculus course, but likely they will be crammed into the short period between the AP exam and end of year which makes you wonder how thoroughly they will be covered. Particularly since the target audience for AP Precalculus (kids who may never take another math class again) don't need these concepts.

Precalc Trig Honors is designed to prepare kids for AP Calculus BC. It also covers limits and introduction to derivatives, topics which are crucial to cover in Precalculus if you want to prepare well for BC. AP Precalculus is not good preparation for BC.[/quote]

So why is my kid's Algebra 2H teacher recommending her for Precalc Trig H, while recommeding her higher achieving classmate for AP PreCalc?[/quote]
Hard to know. What course do your kid & their classmate want to take after Precalculus?  AP Precalculus was designed to expand math access to kids who don't intend to go on to calculus, giving them a credit that some colleges will accept. For those kids, AP Precalculus makes a lot of sense. For kids who want to take calculus in high school, however, the AP credit in Precalculus is not very useful - selective colleges don't give credit for non-college level courses and they will get a real college credit when they take AP calculus the next year anyhow.

AP Precalculus is meant to meet the needs of a wide range of students, not just those who intend to take calculus:
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-precalculus-proposed-course-framework.pdf 
"as AP Precalculus may be the last mathematics course of a student’s secondary education, the course is structured to provide a coherent capstone experience and is not exclusively focused on preparation for future courses."  AP Precalculus also emphasizes real world applications which is meant to appeal to kids who might not otherwise find math interesting but which may also undermine rigor.

Compare the content coverage for AP Precalculus (Framework, page 12) with the FCPS course descriptions. https://insys.fcps.edu/CourseCatOnline/reportPanel/1041/10/0/0/0/1;title=reportPanelSideNav
The AP Precalculus exam does not cover a lot of important topics that kids going on in math would find useful -- parametric equations, matrices, vectors, conic sections, and limits/introduction to derivatives. The College Board does list optional, additional topics (parametric equations, matrices, and vectors) that could be included in an AP Precalculus class and FCPS does include these in its AP Precalculus course description. However, since these latter topics are not covered on the AP Precalculus exam, they will likely get crammed in post-AP exam so it's unclear how thoroughly they will be covered. Of greater note, however, neither the AP Precalculus Framework nor FCPS's AP Precalculus course description make any mention of limits and introduction to derivatives. That is significant. If kids want to take BC calculus, they need to start learning the foundations of calculus in precalculus in order to get through the additional content covered on the BC exam.  Precalc Trig Honors does this, AP Precalculus does not.  You could still take BC without that early foundation in calculus, but it's unclear if you could do well in BC without it. That's why Precalc Trig Honors is better preparation for calculus bound kids than AP Precalculus.

That's what makes districts' introduction of AP Precalculus so odd.  AP Precalculus was created for kids taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade and kids who don't want to go on in math/STEM.  Thus, AP Precalculus could logically be swapped with non-honors Precalculus from a content perspective. However, districts are moving toward swapping AP Precalculus for honors Precalculus which is not a good swap as it will mean BC-bound kids have less preparation than they do now. The latter swap makes no sense content-wise. However, it does make sense if the goal is to make math classes more heterogenous.[/quote]

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