It is not that uncommon to see posts from high school students who are two grades ahead in math (e.g. precalculus in 10th grade) being afraid of the difficulty of calculus that they are looking at for the next year.
Shouldn’t students who are two grades ahead in math be among the strongest students in math who would find any math in high school up to AP calculus AB or BC to be an “easy A” subject?
I’ve noticed here in GA (Public Schools), they rush the gifted kids so fast through math they actually do have issues with Calculus and SAT’s because of it.
If you don’t get a solid grounding on the fundamentals, no amount of acceleration is going to compensate for that.
It depends on how the student is 2 grades ahead. A student starting Algebra I in 7th grade and then progressing as “normal” through the succeeding academic years will likely be better prepared than the student who self studied to test out of geometry or the one who crammed 36 weeks of math into a 6 week summer session.
There is some variability in instructional quality (any of teacher quality, course quality, materials quality) at all levels in high school, including calc, perhaps even moreso for calc than for lower levels.
My fourth child is taking calc now, and each of the four has had a different experience - four different teachers, two different high schools. The most accelerated currently has a 99 as a freshman in AB; is it easier grading (that’s not a covid grade), easier teacher, better teacher? My sense is that we are batting 2 of 4 for instructional quality.
Though I don’t think mine were affected by changes in standards, I wonder whether some areas affected by… suboptimal implementation of changing over to CCSS some years back may have hampered some groups of students, who would now be upperclassmen in high school.
Seems like a student four grade levels ahead in math should be acing any high school math up to AP calculus… actual content learned may be revealed through the AP score.
Or maybe he’s just too young for senioritis (vs the siblings) - am being partly serious.
Well it’s not as simple as being great in math. My kid is four years ahead in math. As a 9th grader, this gifted math kid is finding it harder than ever to delve deeper. Math has come so easily that kid has never had to ask the teacher a question or figure out something that wasn’t working. So kid is doing fine and still acts as a tutor to other kids. But kid has to learn how to engage with the teacher. It took a few months.
I don’t support kids skipping ahead in math, especially based on Summer programs or online learning. But sometimes kids are light years ahead and it doesn’t make sense for them to be in a class where they are learning nothing new. Often things don’t match up exactly so a kid might have had a great Alg I teacher, but missed out on another aspect. It seems really silly to me to have a kid skip solely for bragging rights.
Having a solid math foundation is really important. My oldest repeated a section they had tested out of to ensure that the foundation was there.
BTW, some schools will test to ensure that kids have a solid foundation in all aspects of math.
The difference between acing math and just doing well are based on learning how to go deeper and engage. So, no, I don’t think all students on an accelerated track will ace math unless they learn the soft skills.
For my son it’s partly teacher. But also a huge part that he doesn’t put in that much effort in math when he’s now in high school and has so many more class options. He’s tried other things and likes those more so it’s hard for him to put in the continued mental effort.
DS was many years ahead in math and had no issues with Calc BC in 9th but he had done quite a few math competitions and learned most of his math via AOPS not his school. He has quite a few friends in similar situations and none of them had any issues with Calc.
At his HS there were no kids that had been able to accelerate only using the school and its resources.
Old timers here will know our kid’s story. She was recommended for accelerated math starting in 8th grade. We politely asked the 7th grade math teacher and middle school math department chair to give us a compelling reason why this kid should be accelerated. I should note, she was a very hard worker, got great grades in math, liked math, and was they quiet and polite kid teachers loved. Anyway…they could NOT give us a good reason why she should accelerate. So…we declined the offer…and we were the first ever parent to decline accelerated math.
My husband is an engineer. He felt a strong foundation was more important than anything else.
Our kid graduated having taken honors precalc as her highest HS math course.
She graduated college with a double major in bioengineering and biology. She took calculus in college, plus a lot of higher level math courses. She felt well prepared for her college calculus course and beyond.
Yes, there are some kids who have an innate built in math foundation. But many, many need this as part of their schooling.
Accelerated math has taken on a life if it’s own…and not always for the benefit of the student.
The key question is how many are concerned/afraid vs. how many actually struggle. “Calculus” has a reputation/connotation of being difficult. “Algebra 2” and “Pre-Calculus” do not. It wouldn’t surprise me if 10th graders are simply fearing the unknown.
Though, fwiw, I’ve been here for years and don’t recall any “I’m afraid of Calculus” thread - maybe I just missed them.
My kids were 2 and 3 years ahead and neither had a concern about taking the course. My youngest’s quarterly grades in AB and BC have been 100,100,100,100,99,100,100.
Example of a recent one: Please help! HS Junior Course Selections
notorious for being a difficult class
Sounds to me like
has a reputation/connotation of being difficult
If “Calculus is known to be difficult” is “I’m afraid of it”, then yes, those exist.
I have often wondered the same when I see some of those posts. In our school, about 1/4 to 1/3 do the advanced track, Algebra 1 in 7th grade, which since AB and BC are mandatory separate, means they end up BC calc in 12th gr. These kids on average are smart in math but the average kid is a mid-90s %ile on nationally normed math tests (that is part of how they pick them). Very few are 99th%ile kids. They track them and start to separate from 4th gr on, and since most of them are not math super-whizzes, it is common as they move through the courses for a couple to step back to a regular path. The mean grade for these kids is usually A- in HS. Our D21 is on this path. She has gotten B+ and A- and A in her math classes. Some of these kids are truly math gifted and are a bit bored frankly. D21 is appropriately challenged and never bored. Some years but not every year there are 1-3 kids pulled aside in elementary and told they will do a different path leading to Algebra 1 in 6th grade. My D23 was in this group in 4th grade. The school told us they had 3 kids including her. Unfortunately word got around from one of the 3 and within a year there were 5 and eventually 6. The kids who were added by parent-pressure struggled significantly by the time they got to 7-8 grade. They have only asked TWO kids total to do this path in the years since and they did a better job keeping it quiet. My D23 has been fine and in fact it is currently extremely easy due to the mandated AB and BC separation. The pace is slow and most of the class are seniors who feel quite challenged and routinely struggle to get Bs on tests. Despite the struggle, 90% of them will end up with 4s or 5s from this teacher. We had many “friends” tell us she would miss core things and be lost by high school or be “socially isolated” and suffer. She was never lost or behind, and has had A+ and usually the high scorer on exams for many years now. What did emerge was that she became the quiet one and never asked anything until she had a teacher in 8th who pushed them hard, especially this small group of kids, and she had to learn the soft skills, just like Happytimes2001 described. There are more math electives that are open to her and the school has 4 courses that are technically “past” BC(though some of the top BC kids in 12th take them concurrently), such as calc 3, linear algebra, Math data analytics and more. Being moved to this track allowed her to take AP stats in 9th as a second math and she still got an A+/5, went from top-quarter to top kid in her section by the end of year. The FRQ writing-about-math was a huge learning curve in 9th and she loved the challenge.
Bottom line, I think for kids who are truly highly gifted in math, being very accelerated is very helpful and is not fear-inducing at all.
Perhaps these days, there is a lot more parent-pushing of kids to be more accelerated in math than they are really ready for, as opposed to math acceleration because the kids have demonstrated strong achievement and interest in math? So these kids become afraid of calculus or other more advanced math? But then will the pushy parents push them to take calculus anyway?
Yes, I believe that is the main issue, and happens in the Alg1-in -7th track the most(parent pushing to get on that track is very prevalent). And yes, parents push to stay on the path take it anyway. The school has made some interesting choices by having Honors Geometry be extremely hard, all problem -based requiring thinking outside of the box, so many times the fear is of that class, and school encourages many to step back at that time. Partly due to the mandated AB and BC separation, the pace and teaching of these is easier, so there is not as much “calculus” fear per se in the school–the math fear that happens occurs in Honors geometry.
That seems almost like they are admitting that many students on the +2 math track are there inappropriately due to parent pushing, rather than because they are actually appropriately there due to academic strength and interest in math. Being on the +2 math track used to mean being one of the top students in math, so that calculus BC in one year immediately after precalculus would have been seen as another “easy A” (and 5) by such students.
I think the problem, if existed in some places, is at least partly due to grade inflation in K-12. If their kids get all As (or near perfect numerical grades) in math, parents would think their kids are talented in math and want their kids to be in a gifted program or on an accelerated path, wouldn’t they? Once they’re in that program or on that path, it’s likely to be permanent with no incentive from all sides to reevaluate.
However, decades ago, it seemed like parents of students who were “ordinarily good” at math (i.e. A grades in math, but not obviously finding the usual math to be too slow or too easy) were satisfied with +1 acceleration (reaching calculus rather than precalculus in 12th grade). Now, it seems that parent pushing for +2 or greater acceleration is more common, even though there are diminished benefits for going from +1 to +2 compared to going from +0 to +1, unless the student’s academic strength and interest in math make it obvious that +1 is too slow for the student.