Reply to Algebra in 6th grade - new selection process?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parents should take this decision seriously.  You now have lesser qualified teachers teaching a foundational algebra class without any prior pre algebra prep.  You may get by now but the gaps will show up.  They will show up in 2-3 yrs time.  Opt out unless your kid is truly a math genius [/quote]

I'm actually very confident in our teacher--he has high level math courses on his resume and an undergrad degree in a technical field. I realize we are extremely fortunate in that.

I'm worried that our children are locked into 2 years of post calculus math, like it or not, if we get on this train. There's no clear off ramp if our kid turns into a future humanities major. There's no guarantee that there will be in person dual enrollment options junior/senior year, so we are potentially pushing our kids into online math in the evenings or commuting to GMU. The presenters couldn't explain the difference between calc ab and calc bc or how ap precalc prepared for the two (they didn't even know what high school our elementary fed to), yet assured us there would be plenty of dual enrollment options by the time our children got to high school...but the former makes it hard to trust the latter.[/quote]

This is the perspective that parents are lacking right now.  Some kids try to slow the track down in high school because it gets overwhelming quick and it doesn’t look good to do Calc AB then Calc BC for STEM because it’s basically the same class at a faster pace.  [/quote]

I realize that at the end of the day life is not a race and if taking calc ab/bc is what restores my child's sanity in 5 years then oh well if that takes MIT off the table. If he needed things slowed down that much MIT probably wasn't a good fit to begin with.

But it's just crummy that we are being asked to make a choice without a clear path forward. I think what they *wanted* to say was the program should be open to genius math students and highly prepped/accelerated kids at all schools instead of a few schools but since there was no clear way to identify those kids they just mass enrolled tons based on minimum criteria.  (But she repeatedly said our kids aren't guinea pigs, hah)

When asked if any other school systems have implemented such a program, our county presenters said they weren't aware of any, but as many as 50 kids a year did this in FCPS successfully each year before. 50 out of ~14000 students in 6th grade each year is basically zero though.[/quote]

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