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[quote=Anonymous]Hello everyone.

Just wanted to admit a mea culpa and I did indeed misspeak.  The norm for Calculus in our area is 11th grade.

It's as mentioned we know a lot of kids, both in MCPS and outside of it, that took Calculus in 10th grade.  I was surprised the first time I heard that a student was taking Calculus as a tenth grader.  But then later on seeing more students on that track and seeing the course sequencing for math, saw how that was a realistic expectation and goal. And thinking about it when I was in high school there were students that took Calculus AB in 11th grade and then Calculus BC in 12th.  So it was reasonable to think that current students are more advanced and they're finishing the course sequence earlier and it wasn't that big of a change if it just shifted one grade earlier.

But I actually just took a closer look at the actual course sequence and realized that I left out a course.  So indeed the norm for our area for Calculus is one grade more than I originally stated(11th grade).

But if you all recall the Seven Keys of College Readiness that MCPS tried to push out about fifteen years ago:
https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/press/index.aspx?pagetype=showrelease&id=2512

One of the indicators and measures were that students earn at least a C in Algebra 1 by 8th grade.  I remember at the time this seemed kind of ambitious because MCPS was already dealing with declining proficiency rates, especially in Algebra 1.  Keep in mind that there are students who are capable of doing better than earning a C by 8th grade and it seems kind of like a basic requirement.  Just like how it doesn't list any math courses past Algebra 2.  It's pretty common that academically focused students are taking Precal and Calculus in high school.

One of the reasons why I was posting the Algebra 2 MCAP middle school numbers was because while those numbers are small, I thought that those were the truly advanced students.  And that meant that the next group of students afterwards were the ones that would take Calculus by tenth grade and a bigger group of students but harder to identify which grades they were taking Algebra 1 in on mdreportcard.  But again now realize the Algebra 2 students are the ones on track to take Calculus by tenth grade or earlier.  But the other reason was to show that other school systems do have more schools with students in more higher level classes.  And to my knowledge, these schools don't have any special magnet or IB programs.  Maybe MCPS will see their numbers increase to the same numbers if they eliminate the county wide magnet programs and those potential students go to their home schools.  But these are the things that I look at and evaluate when considering areas and schools.[/quote]

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