Reply to VMPI-ways to speak out

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] [b]kids would likely need extra classes outside school to be able to take it, or calculus itself would be a watered down class in Virginia, with the teacher having to do lots of remedial work(presumably the weaker kids would not be in here).[/b]
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You are speculating. 
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Sure, it's educated speculation based on what VDOE has told us thus far (and what they are/aren't directly answering in terms of questions). Consider:
They have told us 'students will still be able to take calculus'; but they have not explained in detail what classes students take when in order to make that happen.

They have told us that they're eliminating all acceleration. Right now: non accelerated students take Algebra 1 in 9th, Geometry in 10th, Algebra 2 in 11th, and Precalc/something else/nothing in 12th. There is no calculus for these students *unless they take classes outside of school to catch up.*

Understanding that they're planning to rework Algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 content into a different sequence: Either this is still going to take roughly 3 years of time to get through the content, OR they're going to drop some topics from the curriculum. They have not revealed what the specific mapping of content is from the old courses to the new, but they have also never stated that they're dropping content. Assuming it's going to take 3 years of time to get through all this course material still, that leaves kids who want calc in 12th having to take precalc with trig (right now a 1 year course) when? This is why we're [b]speculating[/b] they're going to have to take it over the summer to be prepared.

The other option we can see is that some content will be dropped from (we're guessing) Algebra 2 and precalc/trig, and they plan to somehow combine those two (currently full year) courses into one year total so that students can still take calc in 12th. We think it's dumb to try and compress large amounts of the high school curriculum when VDOE is insisting that our kids need to all sit through years of repetition in elementary instead of going to algebra when they're ready.

If you can logically see a 'path' to calc that doesn't involve summer school or compressing the HS curriculum in what VMPI has presented thus far, then by all means, [b]tell us what we're missing here.[/b]

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