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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The MCPS forum is discussing AP Precalculus as well. A poster there linked to an excellent student editorial which details numerous reasons why AP Precalculus will not prepare students as well for both Calculus AB and BC as their school's Honors Precalc class.

https://saratogafalcon.org/content/precalculus-honors-classes-should-not-transform-curriculum-to-conform-to-ap-precalculus/
[/quote]
PP again. An excerpt from this editorial:

"Even worse, the AP Precalculus curriculum focuses on skills that are not actually useful for the AP Calculus curriculum, which hinders its status as a pure prerequisite. For example, the current class plans to teach students how to use a graphing calculator to find critical points of functions and regression equations to model data. However, finding critical points is a skill typically learned in calculus. Without knowing derivatives, students cannot have a proper understanding of critical points or what makes a point a local and/or global extrema, promoting a superficial learning mindset.

Furthermore, regression equations are a topic in AP Statistics, not AP Calculus. Many students take one but not the other, so AP Precalculus is sidetracked from its actual point. In our school’s math curriculum, such things are covered solely in AP Statistics so that those interested in the subject can learn it if they want to as a separate topic.

A good deal of the curriculum in AP Precalculus, such as inverses of functions, polynomials, exponential, and logarithms are covered in Algebra II Honors, and so are quickly glossed over in the first couple units of Precalculus Honors. This helps provide more time to focus on more advanced topics at length, providing better preparation for subsequent calculus courses."

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