Reply to VDOE - VMPI is dead? Isn't that illegal?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a high school math teacher, we already offer a lot of non calc options. My school teaches stats (AP/gen Ed), computer science (ap/gen Ed), and discrete math, in addition to precalc/calc ab/calc bc/linear algebra/matrix theory.

TBH, the math department is stretched really thin. Most of these offerings are singleton courses, because when you have 10 course offerings for senior year and most kids take calc or stats, there aren’t enough kids to fill multiple sections of everything else. That means most teachers are teaching 3 different courses to make the schedule work, and the quality of lessons is lower and stress level of teachers is higher. I would much prefer we partnered with NVCC to offer some of these classes for the 20 kids who want linear algebra.[/quote]

Your post seems to highlight the problem VMPI was trying to address.  Your list of alternatives to calculus were a bunch of classes for which calculus would typically be a prerequisite, or other AP-level classes.  VDOE recognizes that students who are not on the calculus/advanced math track aren’t well-served by the current math curriculum because it’s not giving them enough focus on the functional math skills they will need/use as adults.  That is a lot of kids, significantly more than will take anything beyond calculus at any point in their academic career, and their needs have to be met as well.

Unfortunately, some people cannot cope with the idea that meeting the needs of those students might mean a school system takes your suggestion if partnering with a local community college to offer differential equations to advance math students.[/quote]

How is discrete math, gen Ed statistics, or gen Ed comp sci a course with calculus as a prerequisite? We also offer stand alone trig, and a bridge math between geometry/algebra 2. These are all courses where we send kids who can’t or don’t want to do precalc and above. Even AP stats only has algebra 1 as a prereq and is quite accessible to atypical math kids.

What are you hoping for? Shopping math? Construction math? Personal finance math? These are offered through sped courses and votech courses and the mandatory finance credit. VMPI is literally just making more courses without solving any problems.

If the only change was merging A1/geo/a2 into a 3 year series I would be okay-ish with it. I feel like in northern Virginia I have so many kids coming from out of state this would be a challenge though. Where does a kid who transfers as a junior with A1 and Geo completed out of state go? Year 3? But then they’ll miss half of algebra 2 and repeat extra geometry and not be ready for precalc. I wish we would just go common core like other states—it would simplify so much for kids and teachers alike. Why must Virginia always be special?[/quote]

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