Anonymous wrote:The reason to try to "catch up" would be because of the cohort of kids who are taking Algebra 2 in 9th grade. If it's a better class because the kids are more motivated, understand things quicker, etc. that is something for you to consider. But that may not be the case at your school. One thing that might happen is that the Honors Algebra 2 class is not limited to 9th graders but has 10th or even 11th graders in it. That could affect the dynamics too. All things for you to consider.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason to try to "catch up" would be because of the cohort of kids who are taking Algebra 2 in 9th grade. If it's a better class because the kids are more motivated, understand things quicker, etc. that is something for you to consider. But that may not be the case at your school. One thing that might happen is that the Honors Algebra 2 class is not limited to 9th graders but has 10th or even 11th graders in it. That could affect the dynamics too. All things for you to consider.

Actually, it's not really like that. "Honors" Algebra II in 9th grade is going to include kids from 9th - 12th grades, so there's no real cohort advantage. There will be kids on the "advanced" track, kids on the "regular" track, and kids on the "remedial" track, all in the same classroom.

This is true to some extent in the sense it is mixed grades, but I doubt you’d see a lot of remedial kids in the honors section. Even some of the advanced kids drop down to the regular section because Algebra 2 and pre-calc seem to be the first time math really becomes more challenging for even the advanced kids.

For what it's worth, my experience with a kid who is not that math focused was that the so-called honors algebra 2 was still pretty heterogeneous and it wasn't until pre-calculus that kids started dropping down to regular level. In fact, I'm not even sure that our school had a regular level algebra 2.