Reply to What is normal for 9th grade math

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think we are wasting too much time arguing with one mom who wants to flex and start an irrelevant public vs private school debate.

My DD is transitioning from a MD public school to a private school in 9th. She is pretty math-oriented and does mathcounts, math club, etc. I know what a lot of her peers are up to at both private and public school, which appears to be similar.

There is the standard track:
8th grade algebra I
9th grade geometry
10th grade algebra II
11th grade precalc
12th grade calc

There is a honors/GT/advanced track:
8th grade geometry
9th grade algebra II
10th grade precalc
11th grade calc

And of course, there are always some kids who are ahead of this schedule. And there are some private schools which like to do algebra I as the normal 9th grade math class. My impression is that this is more common in Catholic schools which like to pride themselves on tradition and old fashioned rigor, but I could be wrong.

Schools and districts seem to vary on whether they have kids jump right into calc BC from precalc, or whether they make kids take calc AB before taking calc BC.

Our public school system does not offer multivariable and beyond, so these kids who finish calc before 12th grade would have to take additional classes at a community college for credit unless they are satisfied with AP stats as the only other option. Our private school does offer courses beyond calc bc and AP stats.

I do not think it really matters if you finish calc in your 11th or 12 grade year. This will not make you a better mathematician in college. In fact, some colleges strongly suggest you take their own calc classes instead of using AP credit to skip them. See this opinion piece on why its not good to rush through the math curriculum towards calculus:

https://phys.org/news/2015-11-calculus-bad-students-futures-stem.html

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As the linked article shows, high school calculus is not "standard", but it is at the high end of "common".

Only 15% of students take AP calculus. Throw in some more who do IB or private non-AP, or public non-honors calculus (almost always a mistake).

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Perhaps it should not be standard, but calc has become standard in our area for MC/UMC college-bound kids for the reasons mentioned in that article.

Quote from the article: "In a typical section of engineering calculus, up to 90% of my students have taken it in high school. While there are some positive aspects to retaking the course, there are downsides, the most notable of which is overconfidence and a student's misplaced certainty that he or she already knows the material.... So this is the crux of the problem: students lacking the requisite foundational abilities may not succeed because the college faculty member expects them to be at ease with these more basic ideas, freeing them to absorb and understand the new, more conceptual material. The rush to AP Calculus has instructed students in the techniques for solving large classes of standard calculus problems rather than prepare them for success in higher mathematics."[/quote]

I'm not convinced by this. In high school, I studied calculus with a teacher with many years of experience. There was nightly homework. There was the opportunity to ask questions as we went along. At college, the instructor stood at the front of a lecture hall and lectured at us with no interaction for far less time per week. Tutorials were run by more senior grad students with no teaching experience. Maybe students with AP calc are a bit over confident initially , but heaven help the ones with no prior calculus knowledge.[/quote]

I don't think the main point is that college calculus is better than high school calculus (though sometimes this is true). I think the main point was that in the push to take calculus earlier and earlier, many students are not getting their foundational math as solid as they ought to be. In other words, more time needs to be spent on a deeper dive of algebra, geo, and trig in order to really do well at higher level math. Some students are ready for calc by 11th grade, but most are not but are being rushed into it. Students who are gifted at math can also benefit from diving deeper into topics rather than rushing to the next course, but that's not how most schools do things. My kid once remarked that the prealgebra course she took from art of problem solving was more challenging than the algebra II course she took at her school. [/quote]

Saying dive deeper means nothing.  Each course is a year in high school.  Granted it's teacher specific but it's generally the same classwork.  Most schools who do a later algebra track are slowing things down.  Maybe they take more time to explain them but that's not necessarily deeper.  The difference with AOPS is the teaching style and they actually use a book and curriculum.[/quote]

All I’m saying is that I think the classes should be deeper and more challenging for the advanced kids, instead of pushing them along to the next topic. Why you think that all year-long courses are equivalent? Two different schools can approach the same course very differently. I saw what my 8th grader has gotten in algebra I, geometry, and algebra II and I was not at all impressed. I’m pretty certain my math classes were less shallow and we were given harder problems back in the day.  That’s just her school though and I don’t know about yours. My daughter’s school system is definitely just rushing kids through.[/quote]

The quality of the teaching and curriculum is very important but that's not necessarily rushing through things.  For us, the lack of homework/repetition/problems and the curriculum (especially no textbooks) has been the biggest struggle.  My child started in 6th.  I think its too young but they wanted to do it and the curriculum wasn't challenging at all.  I think 7th is a better year to start for a child who can handle it.  We've had a huge mix of teachers both in public and private and the teacher quality and curriculum play a big part in it.  Not everyone can teach math.  We've supplemented with tutors and one parent who remembers it.[/quote]

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