Reply to 2023-24 Course catalog

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Let's wait for more info, which will likely come during curriculum night this week.  Hold your fire...[/quote]
A McLean HS math teacher has posted two videos describing two ways that AP Precalculus will be implemented next year at McLean HS. Kudos to the above poster who said to wait for info at curriculum night; they are well informed about FCPS's plans and gave good guidance throughout this thread as to what to expect.

At McLean, there appear to be at least two sections of AP Precalculus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd3p9gv01C8
[b]Section one[/b] will be for calculus-bound kids (AB and BC). This class will cover the three sections of the AP exam plus additional topics including parametric equations, vectors, limits, and introduction to derivatives. I am the PP who was concerned that kids would not be prepared for BC coming out of AP Precalculus. The modifications that McLean is making allay my concerns there as McLean is essentially recreating honors Precalc Trig. McLean is also advising calculus-bound students not to take the AP Precalculus exam as 1) FCPS only gives kids six free AP exams, 2) colleges typically do not give credit for both Precalculus and Calculus, and 3) many colleges do not give credit for Precalculus. Even if kids forgo the AP Precalculus exam, they will still receive a +1 GPA boost.  FCPS is effectively recreating the wheel here -- they are putting calculus-bound kids into AP Precalculus but are telling them not to take the exam and are giving them the additional content found in honors Precalc Trig. Why go to all this trouble -- why not just leave them alone in honors Precalc Trig? Is this all just to give them a +1 GPA boost that comes from an AP course?  Is the goal to put more kids into AP Precalculus to make it appear more heterogenous?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icekNxClzhE
[b]Section two[/b] will cover the three AP Precalculus units included in the exam plus the optional fourth unit and will also generate a +1 GPA boost. No mention is made of which students are expected to take this course. However, in reviewing skills needed to take AP Precalculus, the math teacher said that students will have covered some AP Precalculus topics in their Algebra 2 [b]or[/b] honors course. This is interesting. If I am interpreting this correctly, it suggests that kids taking non-honors Algebra 2 and honors Algebra 2 would be eligible to take Section 2 of AP Precalculus.  Can anyone clarify if this is the case?  If so, while this might allow some students to get an AP credit who would otherwise not, it would not generate as big of an equity boost as course creators would have hoped. Why? The optional fourth unit is more difficult and less useful for students who do not intend to go on in math. Inclusion of the fourth unit may discourage some non-honors math kids from taking AP Precalculus Section 2. A better formulation for Section 2, from an equity perspective, would have been to have this section cover only the three topics included on the AP Precalculus exam in order to maximize student enrollment. Might there be a third AP section that does the latter? Hard to know but there was no video posted that described any third such AP option.

The FCPS course catalog stills lists non-honors PreCalc Trig as being offered at McLean. https://insys.fcps.edu/CourseCatOnline/reportPanel/1041/10/0/0/0/1;title=reportPanelSideNav so it would appear that there would be at least three tiers of Precalculus at McLean -- non honors PreCal Trig, AP Precalculus, and AP Precalculus for calculus bound kids. A key question is whether McLean's model will be replicated at every FCPS high school or whether AP Precalculus implementation will vary between high schools. This is a crucial point that FCPS should clarify. [/quote]

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