I don’t know if this is relevant, but one thing I noticed that was interesting at my prep school is that the school actively slows down accelerated students. If you’re a +2 (~40%) or +3 (~10%), then the school won’t allow you to take multivariable calculus right after you do AB/BC; instead, you have to take a yearlong statistics course (either the standard AP Stats or a unique Calculus Based Probability and Statistics course) before moving onto more advanced topics; as a result, pretty much all students end up taking multivariable calculus for the first time in college.
Note that the multivariable calculus course description also says that “It is a gentle qualitative introduction to the subject and is not meant to replace the rigorous college version.”
Do you think the school’s intention is to actively slow down accelerated students, or do you think their intention is to broaden students’ understanding of quantitative concepts via the study of statistics? For the vast majority of people, statistics is far more relevant than multivariable calculus. I’m not up on the latest updates to the core curriculum at Harvard but last I checked there was a quantitative reasoning requirement (often met by applied statistics) but not a calculus requirement. Lawrenceville prepares far more students for BAs in the Ivies than they do for BSs at MIT and Carnegie Mellon.
Standard for our system (generally comes in as slightly below average for the NYC suburbs) is +1 for about 1/3 of students decision made in 8th grade.
I have two kids S1 was clearly wired for math - figured out fractions from helping me cook and multiplication looking at clocks when he was still in pre-K. He was advanced to 3rd grade math in 1st grade after months of me and his teacher begging the principal to allow it. He loved it and the third graders couldn’t have been nicer. His second grade teacher wouldn’t do it said she’d give him differentiated work. (He had endless sheets of basically figuring out permutations). At about this time I found the gifted boards and gave him stuff to read that looked interesting. (He learned about series, Pascal’s triangle and then discovered computer programming teaching himself Visual Basic.) One year he did EPGY math from Stanford on his own after school, because school math was so boring. In 6th grade I asked for him to be advanced. He took the 7th grade final exam got a B and was advanced to 7th grade math - which was still way too easy, but he that’s how he got to the +2 track. (Two other kids joined him when they got word of what we’d done.) Later in high school 4 kids took Trig in the summer so they could do AP Calc BC in 10th grade. They all took Linear Equations as seniors which had never been offered before. On his own my kid was on Math teams, Science Olympiad, Academic Team and spent many hours exploring MIT’s online offerings, modding computer games and learning more about programming. He ended up at SCS at CMU. He was given a math placement exam and did fine in their more advanced courses, but by then he was definitely much more interested in programming (and physics, his minor) than in math.
S2 never showed much interest in math and always had issues with memorizing math facts. He was tested for LDs in 4th grade and topped out the math portion of the IQ test while getting below average scores in other areas. His pre-calc teacher thought he had a better mathematical mind than the kids in his class who got better grades because they weren’t doing things like trying to figure out the Pythagoreum theorem from scratch on exams. He was on the +1 track, took BC Calc as a senior. (In our school you can choose A or B.) He took no math in college. He’s a master of Excel spreadsheets, though I don’t know if he uses them in his current position in the Navy.
Our district has G&T accelerated program that starts in 3-4th grade, admits children in the 96th percentile on standardized ability and achievement tests, and groups them in clusters of one or two classes in several regular schools, where they take ‘core’ subjects, including math, in separate classrooms, and some ‘general’ subjects with schools’ “general population”.
Most kids in the program start Algebra in 7th grade, and a few top math kids start it in 6th, thus beginning Precalculus freshman year of high school, and graduating having taken AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations.
Basically, it is a proposal to use late acceleration decisions (when the student is offered algebra 2 versus algebra 2 + trigonometry + precalculus) instead of early acceleration decisions (in middle school or earlier). I.e. what SFUSD does.
It is not surprising that the reaction on this thread in this forum is negative, given the self-selection of those posting. Many posting here have truly elite-in-math students who properly should be in the +2 or higher track. However, such students are a small minority overall (though most school systems do not serve them that well in any case, since they do not offer additional math enrichment and run out of math courses for +2 or higher students).
But the vast majority of students would be properly placed in +0 or +1 tracks. The linked page suggests that the main problem with early tracking is that other factors besides student achievement misplace many students (e.g. pushy tiger parents, usually high SES, pushing their kids to higher tracks*, or low SES kids being ignored and left in lower tracks). Late tracking decisions, when the level of student achievement in high school is more clear, is intended to reduce this type of thing. Presumably, SFUSD would be the test case for that.
*Apparently common, due to the prevalence of two year calculus AB then BC sequences in many high schools, indicating that many +2 students are not actually strong enough in math to handle BC in one year after precalculus.
There is also that issue that high school (not dual enrollment) multivariable calculus is less likely to be accepted for advanced placement by colleges. This is more relevant to multivariable calculus than it is to introductory statistics (either non-calculus-based or calculus-based), since multivariable calculus is more commonly listed as a prerequisite for other courses (at least in subjects like math, physics, engineering) in college.
But it also looks like that particular prep school does not really cater to the true elite-in-math students as much as some other prep schools or magnet schools do. Perhaps they assume that the +2/+3 students were pushed ahead of where they should be in math by pushy tiger parents. That may be true for many or most of them, but it may not necessarily be true for all of them.
In elementary school, my child was bored every single year, and every year I got the same response from teachers - we can’t offer **advanced topics, and there is no gifted programs in our district. School/principal/teachers are all avoiding the topic of accelerations.
We learned our lessons and move our child to middle school with acceleration. It becomes the opposite. There are constant races among students to skim through the curriculum. Now I am concerned about the depth of my child’s learning.
** I think our school is using common-core? The curriculum used in our district is not even advanced from K-5, it is just painstakingly slow and repetitive.
Ontario is also delaying streaming in their math curriculum to grade 11. Previous to this year streaming started in grade 9 into 2 basic tracks “Academic” and “Applied”. The theory behind the two different tracks is that they are supposed to teach the same material but with different pedagogical approaches (book learning vs more hands on). In reality they result in very different outcomes as the level of instruction is not the same. Academic courses lead to the university prep track for grades 11 and 12 which for math specifically, ends with Calculus (though some schools offer IB HL, AP, or other advanced courses). Applied courses lead to the college prep track and those courses can not be used for admission to 4 year universities. Issues around equity of access were raised as students from certain minority backgrounds were predominantly being streamed into the Applied pathway such that they were much less likely to attend university.
As a result starting this year all grade 9 students are being placed in a new de-streamed math course that is supposed to be at an equivalent level to the Academic track. Teachers are supposed to provide differentiated instruction and additional resources to help struggling students to succeed. What the reality will be is yet to be seen as ideology doesn’t always reflect reality. Smaller class sizes would be necessary to make this truly successful I believe but that was not one of the changes made. Many fear that instead the bar will be lowered for all students to the level of the weaker students and that there will be a exodus of students to private schools and magnet programs.
Next year they will do the same with grade 10 math and grade 9 science. Eventually the intention is to postpone streaming in all core courses until grade 11. As the majority of our high schools run on a semestered system, there are not restrictions on students who wish to move ahead at a faster pace on doubling up their courses in a given year to fast-track ahead (though for most there is no advantage to doing so as most schools do not offer more advanced courses beyond the standard curriculum).
We are meeting the teacher to talk about this soon. Teacher recommended +3 to us but I am not so sure. How do school determine that. How can we be sure for students who skim through Algebra 1 or Geometry in two months during summer will not miss anything?
It pains me that elementary school education (at least in my district) couldn’t provide ability-adjusted Math curriculum. And suddenly in middle school, there are choices of acceleration. It forces families in our area to do something on their own (AoPS or tutoring). And yes, not every family can afford that (time wise, money wise).
No matter how smart the children are, if they aren’t exposed to right materials earlier in elementary school, they were forced to cram materials in middle school if they need acceleration. Not every child in accelerated programs is due to tiger parents. I see that part of symptoms in the slowness in elementary school.
And guess pandemic just made the situation worse. I wonder schools are slowing down in other subjects, such as ELA, as well.
Sorry it sounds like ranting but I agree with one of the post here, it is not necessary “acceleration”, putting the curriculum in the context of worldwide education. For children who can grasp the concepts should be offered and encouraged to learn on their own pace early on.
I would sure hate for my kids to be the test case for what happens when kids that are ready for algebra in grade 6 are forced to twiddle their thumbs through middle school.
This, together with poorly designed Math material will kill lot of bright minds by the time they reach HS. Do they plan to continue this all the way to college, collectively dumb down UC?
How many of you here witnessed the poorly design Math, the common-core Math? There are kids who can comfortably understand multiplication but force to use only addition to solve a simple multiplication questions. And it’s simply because they were not taught multiplication table. It is not even a question of gifted or not… it is the material assuming everyone is not able to do math.
See, I always hear that, but I don’t get it. I’ve actually enjoyed STEM a lot more (and gotten a lot better at it) since arriving here. That said, we don’t send very many people to MIT or other mainly STEM-focused schools, so I guess there is a correlation.
That could be true, but the majority of students who are accelerated enough to get to that point (especially if they’re in the “advanced” sequence, i.e. Calc BC/HCBPS) will probably be using some form of advanced math in college.
I actually think it’s a good move on the school’s part—statistics are somewhat integrated into the lower-level math curriculum anyways, but knowing it in full detail is probably one of the most useful skills one can have; that said, I can imagine how “slowing acceleration” may be controversial among some parents.
I don’t think that would be a problem for Lawrenceville specifically, so the school’s reasons are probably quite different.
From what I’ve noticed, +2s tend to be students who are “good at math” but not particularly interested or excellent (the default at Lawrenceville, by the way, is +1—there’s maybe eight +0s in my grade)—in fact, a lot of them end up in Calculus AB, which is known to be very very easy here. The +2s who take Calculus BC have more in common with the +3s, being students who are actually interested in/really good at math—I’ve never really noticed evidence of members of either group being “forced into it.”
Maybe, but I suspect the tiger parent pushing is identified in 9-10th grade. The MV issue comes up well after the assessments/tracking is done when the student enters the school. At least in kiddo’s school. The school actively and successfully pushes back on the pushy parents, using its placement test for support.
It isn’t one of the most math-focused schools, but it does also have a significant number of +2 and +3 students because of the high international population. Kiddo’s prep school uses Exeter problem-based math, but that only has 4 years of curriculum (through AB, sort of). If you start at the 3rd year in 9th, the school has to figure out what to do with you in your junior year. The solution they have right now sounds similar to L’ville - deep dive proof-based BC calc junior year and then a combo accelerated AP stats and an intro to MV/linear algebra. If a kid is more advanced than that, they do independent study. That said, the shift to Exeter math only happened a couple of years ago. Kiddo’s class is the first one to exhaust the Exeter curriculum in their sophomore year. The school is tweaking the curriculum to figure out what works best going forward.
My sense is the goal of the stats/intro MV approach is to provide a course that will allow students to place out of a college class and at the same time lay the groundwork for successful advanced college math (knowing a kid would have to repeat MV even if they took it in high school). I agree that there is only so much being +3 can do for you, and better to get a solid foundation than speed ahead. My kid is annoyed by having to take stats instead of more advanced math, but gets the logic behind it.
The kid is in Princeton, and finds himself underprepared for what he wants to do, and doesn’t have enough time to catch up. He was interested in CS grad school if he had the skills. He thinks he is not up to it now.
Ahh the dreaded common core. We had the same issue in elementary. A teacher in the early grades recommended going outside the school. I thought he was crazy but he wasn’t. Middle school didn’t meet our kids’ needs. It’s been a hard road trying to get subject matter that meets their needs and is challenging but not too difficult. I think we did ok, kids haven’t been bored in a while.
Unlike your experience our middle school experience was the zenith of math. Boredom and repetition. In the very early grades, the teachers would send kids off to do things online after they finished the regular classwork. I think one of the programs was a CTY or JHU thing.
I think your child can tell you if they want to do +3. You also might want to look ahead a couple of years. Can you continue with +3 without spending a fortune and going to another school to get instruction?
Yes, there are pushy tiger parents out there. But IMO, there are more kids who are held back by math education in the US than parents who push too hard. YMMV.
