This.
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Frankly I think this is the tag that schools use to push back against parents they donāt want to deal with :-). I think you need to take responsibility for your ownās kidsā education and not expect that the school has their best interest at heart.
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The tagline Tiger Parents:
Oh yes. It is. Schools aim for the middle and sometimes they fall short. Sometimes they get to the center. They consider that success. Their goal is good enough.
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Iāve been loathe to introduce the kids to weekend math or supplemental math because it is an inefficient use of their time. I really wanted the school to teach at the right level/ Weāve had that through 2nd grade, and from 6th onwards. In between, we think the curriculum was mediocre. Different school from K to 2nd. I also grew up in a tradition of learning math through problem solving ā not reading a text book. So I give them a book with problems, and Iāll pick the 5 or 10 hardest out of some 50 or 100. If they can manage them without my help, I tell them not to bother preparing for an exam using the school textbook. So they are done prepping for the exam in an hour or less.
Yes, I agree in principal that the schools should teach at the right level. But it wasnāt happening. Gave it up after a couple of years. The teachers kept suggesting we do additional programs outside of school. Glad we did. Never looked back. It was a haul and $$ for outside supplemental programs but my kids needed them.
Agree. I donāt plan to push for it unless my child asks for it.
One thing I found tricky about +3 is that it implies taking both of the following in HS:
- MV or Diff Eq
- AP Stats
How practical is it to take those courses in HS? For non-STEM children these are unnecessary burden. For STEM-inclined children, likely they will need to redo these in college. They may benefit from learning it earlier and do well in college repeating those curse but it is such a waste of time redoing these.
Also it depends on school. Not all the schools offer those curriculum
I discouraged my son from doing AP Stat. It is a day of reading if the kid is in the mood. Altogether. Not worth spending one full course over a year. You can just prep for a day and take the AP exam directly. Useful to have taken AP Stat for some colleges ā in terms of being a pre-req for a college course. I know @mtmind is upset with me for saying this :-). But it was a choice between Stat and Jazz. The choice is clear. Or Stat and AP Chem ā he canāt wing AP Chem in a day. Or Stat and Math 6 ā that is not wingable either ā¦ Eventually he needs a stats course in life. So he is going to sign up for a grad course before leaving college. Done properly. He canāt wing it.
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is it possible that by catering to the advanced math kids, we are diluting the education for the standard kids by siphoning away the best teachers, or at least spreading their energies too thin so they canāt dedicate and devote enough time to their non-advanced kids?
maybe the extra math that the geniuses need can be outside of school or an elective or part of an after-school EC thing?
by the way, I know personally of more than a few kids who are in advanced math, and they just have tutors so they can get by in it. there are very few kids who really belong in those classes.
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Thatās another thing that often happensāof our domestic students who are +3, pretty much all of them got there by skipping algebra 2; of course, many of these people are absolute math whizzes (USAMO qualifier types), but because of the Lawrenceville (and Iām sure this is common in many academically rigorous schools) grind culture, many students who arenāt qualified end up pushing themselves to precalc when not ready; one of my friends had a sibling who tried taking precalc BC freshman fall and ended up with a grade in the D range, for instance.
Could be. At least at Lville, most of our really good math teachers teach almost exclusively precalc BC and calc BC.
Iām curious if thatās true. Most of the students I encounter (a small, selective sample, to be sure) took BC because they were in an advanced sequence for all of their classes and BC was just what you took in 11th or 12th grade for Math, just as AP Lang and Lit was what you took for English. Often itās about maxing out APs and rigor, not necessarily prepping for a major.
Iād say thatās true for those in Calc AB as juniors (a fairly large amount), but my schoolās BC curriculum is so difficult that you really have to be serious about + good at math to get all the way through it. Lots of people drop from BC to AB between terms, in fact.
The thread is going a bit off-topic with posts about parenting styles, particularly when it devolves into unflattering terminology. Letās return to topic.
Iād also say that multiple posts about a data set of one (e.g. Lawrenceville) also take us off-topic.
And since recent posts have been dominated by a few users, I have placed the thread on slow mode to help us reset.
That is why acceleration beyond +1 and especially +2 needs to be carefully considered in the context of what happens when the student completes single variable calculus before 12th grade.
- Is there a nearby college to take suitable and transferable more advanced math courses?
- Are the parents, perhaps with help from the school, able to provide opportunities for math enrichment for the student after the student completes single variable calculus?
Obviously, if the student runs ahead at whatever pace the student wants and the parents and school are just hanging on, that is one thing (but there must still be planning for the above questions). But if there is a question between +1 versus +2, or +2 versus +3, and it is not obvious from the student which to choose, the above questions matter in terms of what (if any) benefit the additional acceleration can bring.
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This is really an elementary school problem. I have yet to see an educator advocating for the end of differentiated reading instruction. Has any teacher ever asked a 2nd grader reading at a 6th grade level that they really do have to just sit there with early readers and you canāt possibly be given material at your current level? But it happens every single day with math instruction.
I would never want one of my children to skip Algebra 2 or to cram Geometry into the summer. We were fortunate enough to be at a K-8 school that allowed those who mastered early curriculum to move on. So both my kids were +3 based on when they started Algebra, not condensing high school topics.
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Also, K-6 in the US is generally taught by non-subject-specific teachers. Credentialing for elementary education may not require enough math and math teaching to handle the more advanced-in-math students. So K-6 is too slow for many students, but then middle school starts the mad rush to math acceleration by some.
It would not be surprising that if K-6 math instruction were done better (perhaps with subject-specific teachers in at least the upper part of it), more (perhaps almost all) students will be able to comfortably and confidently get on the +1 track. As it is now, the failure of āalgebra 1 in 8th grade for allā some years back suggests that the slow pace of K-6 math prevented that from being successful.
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Make them run a few laps! 
Depends on the schools. Many of these kids end up in other programs as well or private schools. Some teachers like to teach these kids, others do not. Iāve heard it said that advancement takes away from the other kids. I donāt buy it. If that was the case, there would be no honors, AP courses at any school.
Well, I would not say that outside of the house, but I agree and am still laughing. I think it can be an extremely important class in college however. Stats is applicable in most fields including humanities.
@emi722 Once your child advances, you do need to have a plan for the following years. We saw many go to magnet/privates or do Summer programs. Itās the consideration and research needed before advancing a kid.
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There is a larger point I want to make, generalizing the comment on AP Stats. Some subjects in high school have numerous topics within them ā like biology for instance. Some subjects, on the other hand, have a handful of topics. I was told that Honors Physics, which is really AP Physics without calculus in our school, is just a little bit of calculus and a sum total of about 10 concepts. This is one of those āparsimoniusā subjects that doesnāt have a vast number of topics within it. Likewise, I think some of the math subjects are parsimonius in their coverage. I think math acceleration can be attempted with less trepidation than we currently see amongst families when we recognize that the subject requires deep understanding on just a very small core set of concepts rather than dealing with a book with color pictures that runs 300 - 500 pages, and each concept is treated in an atomic way that needs to be understood separately.
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