Since high school math teachers are supposed to have been college math majors (with additional teacher education course work), shouldn’t most of them have taken single variable calculus and real analysis and therefore be able to teach single variable calculus to advanced high school students?
Arguably this being the better way of teaching calculus — ie with some intro to analysis …
In the real world:
"According to the Just Equations report, about half of all high schools offer calculus, though just 38% of high schools with predominantly Black or Lation/a enrollment offer the course. Students in rural areas are also less likely to have access to calculus.
According to 2015-16 data from the Department of Education, the widest racial gaps in high school STEM course enrollment occur in calculus. Well over half (58%) of students enrolled in high school calculus were white, while just 8% were Black."
If only half of all HS’s offer calculus, there must be a glut of highly qualified calculus teachers cooling their heels. I’ll take my tongue out of my cheek now. The half that don’t offer it, can’t find qualified teachers.
Note that high schools includes continuation / reform schools, juvenile hall schools, specialty non-math/science schools, etc. that may have small numbers of students with too few who are advanced in math for the school to offer a calculus course to. In terms of students, the percentage of students who are in a high school that offers calculus is significantly higher than 50%, but still significantly short of 100%, but with the usual demographic variation putting some students at a disadvantage:
Of course, access to calculus even when offered by the school may depend on other factors, like middle school math placement decisions.
There are other reasons why a high school may not choose to offer calculus, even if all teachers are qualified to teach it. A small school with few or no advanced-in-math students may not offer calculus because there are too few students who will take it.
2 Likes
Two recessions ago (so after the dot.com bust) I remember several school districts in the greater NYC area hoping that there would be a flood of laid off engineers (IBM had a big restructuring-- and there were about a dozen IBM facilities in the area with highly trained engineers, statisticians, computer scientists, etc.) who would be banging on the doors to teach HS calc and physics. My own district nabbed exactly one. Streamlined licensing for experienced professionals, a differential stipend offered by the district, yadda yadda yadda.
I think NJ went through a similar experience with AT&T.
It ain’t so easy finding competent math teachers (or put another way, it ain’t so easy competing with other employers when you are desperate for good calculus teachers.
I don’t buy the “we don’t offer calculus because there are too few students who will take it” argument. That just means the school has a weak trig teacher and a bad geometry teacher and most kids throw up their hands at pre-algebra and say “I’m done with math”.
1 Like
I don’t understand why we can’t source Khan academy or something similar on a mass scale for schools that can’t afford to hire calculus or any other teachers. With one teacher perhaps supervising the digital remote learning in each school.
Surely you set the expectations low, and they are meeting them by studying to the test. And then you (not you personally) complain that kids are learning to the test.
1 Like
If at a national level, we just set the bar at “Getting a 5 on the BC Calc AP” as a standard-- wow. Transformational. We have kids graduating from HS who can’t calculate percentages, and you’re worried about BC Calc as setting the expectations low?
I’d like to live in an America where kids learned to the test. Because right now a big chunk of the population is pretty much giving up on math once word problems get introduced and it’s really sad. Why do people overpay for insurance? Why do people refinance and end up paying MORE in interest and fees than they would have if they’d stuck with their original loan? Why does someone with a simple tax return pay H&R Block $125 to discover that they are getting a $90 refund?
I’d love some teaching to the test.
2 Likes
It is easy for you to set a moving target. I think you did complain somewhere upthread that kids are not learning properly and learning to the test - unless I mistook you for someone else.
Not me. I love learning to the test- at least there’s a minimum competency established.
It’s like getting a driver’s license. Sure, it would be great if people learned to drive in ice, snow, poor visibility, etc. But at a minimum, they can use a directional signal and stop at a stop sign, right?
2 Likes
And why is that? Because they want to flatter parents and students by giving them near “perfect” scores, and know that students will move to a different test if it is perceived as “easier” to get a high score. For example, ACT is correctly perceived as much easier to get a 36 (especially with rounding) compared to a 1600 on the SAT.
The competition between these tests is to dumb them down, especially when there are rich parents in the background who support the idea of tests being abolished completely in order to ensure “equity” because their kids are bad at testing (but have great grades and ECs).
Don’t get me started 
Nor should there be. In education, a bell curve should not apply in many cases.
For AP classes, hopefully students will be recommended/counselled for or against the class based on how likely the class is suitable for them - there should be no need for failing grades ever.
And for regular classes, assuming the student is looking to learn, a teacher might focus attention at the weaker students, thus affecting the left side of the bell, while the top students will be achieving their A’s anyway?
1 Like
The more obvious reason is that the broader market of college admission testing is far larger than the top end. There is a much bigger market in the 1000-1100 SAT range than there is in the 1500-1600 SAT range.
1 Like
Since one of the main topics of this thread is about how a student’s passion and/or talent in one subject area should be viewed in college admissions, why not design subject area tests (including APs) that allow the student to demonstrate her/his ability to a greater extent in that particular area?
No objections from me to offering additional tests or test options on more advanced material.
But I do not make the decision on what to offer. The College Board probably does not think there is enough of a market for such. Note that they dropped the AP CS AB test a while back, probably due to too few (in their view) students choosing it.
Then we also have the “test optional” trend - which creates market pressure from the “other end”, and takes matters in the opposite direction.
Or does the answer lie in “holistic” admissions, where the occasional “genius” could stand out based on their essay, LOCs, ECs, “résumé”?
However a test is designed, it’d be weighted much less than 100% (or none at all at some colleges) in admissions (i.e. they are still “holistic”). OTOH, our current system of admissions may keep true geniuses (like John von Neumann @blossom mentioned upthread) from emerging. Their energies could be unnecessarily consumed, or even drained, by activities they aren’t passionate about and/or talented at, before they get to college.
So it would be a tragedy if our generation’s John Von Neumann ended up at Wisconsin, Rutgers, UIUC?
Not buying it. Genuis isn’t being held back by holistic admissions, no matter what the “my kid is brilliant but a bad test-taker” crowd is selling.
3 Likes
I am not sure you are aware, but John von Neumann is privately educated paid for by his very wealthy dad. A very high class situation :-). Not sure von Neuman would have been von Neumann even if he went to MIT.