<p>Probably true of many of us who roamed the earth with the dinos. :)</p>
<p>While the transition has been occurring in prep schools for awhile, it all started to change big time back for the publics when Bill Clinton was Prez. One of his suggestions was that most/all? students take Alg in 8th grade. Several states, including California, jumped on the bandwagon…and the rest of history. Now, in our HS, ~1/3rd of the seniors take Calc BC.</p>
<p>Of course, the math bar has even gotten lower/higher? in the last 5 years as our middle schools are starting to offer Geom to the 8th graders. (Previously, those kids had to schlep to the HS for math.) </p>
<p>Our district does not break up Calc into AB and BC, so I can only speculate on the rationale for that.</p>
<p>Megpmom, your district is typical and most of the kids, even in the selective independent schools here follow your school’s placement schedule. </p>
<p>The concern is how thorough the courses are that exist. I know a school in my area where the math courses are abysmal. You could not tell from their course descriptions as they do offer AP BC calc and Statistics. But their kids who do not make it in high schools comprise quite a list. I don’t think their AP exam pass stats are decent either. But their PR is excellent about their math program.</p>
<p>I have one child who is wired for math. However, he was a late bloomer and really did not have much interest in school work. Regardless of what level he was placed, he was an 80%er. In the public schools here which do offer accelerated programs, he would never have been in the top math groups. It was worth every cent to send him to a private school where they did work with him and have him placed where he was challenged. He is a math major today and is taking very advanced math courses. He had a leg up because of his high school program.</p>
<p>The other one was also disinterested, but the school’s normal track got him through calculus, and though he never took math again, he does have 2 semesters of college calcu as credit on his college transcript. I doubt that would have happened in the local school either. </p>
<p>My kids went with the flow, and by changing it, cranking it up a bit, they did get further along academically. If they had gone to a school like Soozievt’s kids, there is no way they would have gotten as far as they did academically. I would have had no ground to stand on to ask for any accelerated opportunities. But given those opportunities, they did perform.</p>
<p>^I agree that AP pass rates are very telling. It disturbs me that USN&WR rankings are determined on number of tests taken per student, not on passing rate. To me, if my kid did not make a 4 or 5 on the AP test, then they have no business being in AP. (Disclaimer: D made a 2 on Physics B AP test. Yes, she had no business being in the class. Was only in class due to scheduling conflict and passed class with a B because valedictorian BF did her homework!)</p>
<p>Yes, that my kids who did not do that great in their math classes did get 4s and 5s on the AP exams is a testament to the teaching of the course. Also the stats on the pass rates are high.</p>
<p>I know some kids in a small Dallas Catholic school that has some phenomonal AP test pass rates, by the way. Cistern (?) or something like that.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s it. We were in Dallas a few weeks ago and met up with friends with sons at that school. It sounded like one very well run academic program. I wish we had a choice like that here.</p>
<p>I think the answer to the original question has two parts: 1 - with the internet, we’re all more aware of what’s going on; you can see lots of kids doing what you only personally knew a few do when you were in school. 2 - We have all become more empowered (again due to the internet) and knowledgeable about the options, so we can better do what is needed for advanced children.</p>
<p>
Yup, that’s it. We eventually pulled out and homeschooled so he could get what HE needed in math and other subjects.</p>
<p>It is not that common for students to be beyond AP Calculus BC in High school. For some schools “No Child Left Behind” has really have schools focusing on under performing students and not developing students who excel.</p>
<p>Kids these days are so academically ambitious… I know a freshman in hs taking ap calc bc and i think its ridiculous. If u want to major in math related subjects in college u should follow the overachieving path but for people like me that are not intending to major in math, i dont see the need for overachieving. As long as u finish calc in high school, ur fine :)</p>
<p>When I graduated with the Mastadons, I recall the sequence was Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2 and pre-Calc (or Calc if you were gifted). I reached my math level at pre-Calc and the mind could comprehend nothing more.</p>
<p>When my son moved from 5th grade to middle school, they were either tested (or relied on reports from 5th grade teachers) to initially track the math levels. For the first semester there were only two levels - normal and advanced. He was in the advanced section, and after the first semester, the math teacher met with the parents and advised them where she thought the student should be placed. She suggested that he moved to the very advanced section which was scheduled to complete Geometry by 8th grade (the regular advanced section would complete Algebra by 8th). My son’s dilema was that he really liked the first teacher and the higher advanced math teacher was an unknown. He was comfortable with the math. He did decide to go with the even more advanced math track and took AP Calc BC in junior year. For senior year he took the higher level IB math (although I could not begin to explain what that was). He tested out of math for college and has no desire to pursue it, not his passion.</p>
<p>As an aside, a friend of my son’s took Kumon during grade school. It certainly helped him with the rote memorization of the lower math subjects. When he reached the middle school he was also tracked to the highest math track with my son. However, during 7th grade the family spent the second semester abroad and their son was tutored in Algebra. When he returned, he was required to test with the rest of the class. The teacher would not pass him to Geometry and the mother pitched a fit. The problem was that Kumon taught him the simple math, but he had difficulty understanding the higher math concepts, but she couldn’t understand that. Likewise, my son had other friends that stayed on the higher math track into HS, but dropped to non-honors math when they reached pre-Calc.</p>
<p>Like many others, my son took took calculus his sophomore year; he’s now a junior doing independent study math and AP stat. Next year, he’ll take math at a nearby college. While I knew he was “good at math,” it did not dawn on me that he was above the norm until recently. His sister, who is two years older and also a good student, took AP calc senior year and I assumed he would follow the same route. </p>
<p>He followed the normal math curriculum until high school. I became concerned when he told me that he was using his 8th grade algebra I class as a study hall because he already knew the material (he also found that the teacher did not know his stuff). So, I decided to explore options for high school, and decided on a private prep school (not boarding) where he would have more flexibility. He took honors algebra II and geometry freshman year, and skipped precalc sophomore year. Even with acceleration, classroom work has never been challenging and hes always working on his own. </p>
<p>He is the only student in the school who is accelerated to this degree, although there are several others who are one year ahead. Interestingly, all of the other accelerated students are internationals or are of Asian descent. My son is, shall we say, the only one who is a product of the mass immigration from Europe and Ireland in the 1860s. My guess is that the other students were accelerated at a much younger age and they are advanced only because they have been exposed to more math, not because they are particularly talented. I think this may be what the OP is driving at. I do think much of the math acceleration we see is a result of parental expectations and perhaps cultural norms.</p>
<p>My son completed calculus as a HS senior just as I did. I wish we had gotten him accelerated into higher classes. I made As in math, but I had to work HARD. He just made an A in second semester calculus in college and told me, “I don’t do much of the homework. I just make sure I understand the concepts, then I know I can work the problems on the tests.” That blew me away. It’s weird when your child is smarter than you are!</p>
<p>Many of these kids who accelerate their math so early don’t go much further in high school. It does free up their math requirement so that they could take more of what they want.</p>
<p>My son was discussing some econ models with someone we know. She’s about 10 years older than he is and we knew her when she was a brilliant high schooler. She was on of those AP Calc BC kids. She came up to me later and was telling me how she didn’t take any more math in college as she was a psychology major, now with a PHD doing research in a major university. She said she felt a bit sad that she could not follow what my son was saying, and how she had once been her high school math star and now could hold a conversation on point with a college sophomore math major.</p>
<p>Well, OP, I learned at PT conferences this year that my district is going to be dismantling that highest math track, the one that put about 15 out of 300 kids a year on track to hit calculus by junior year. The reason? The teacher’s aren’t seeing benefits to the students on the fast track. The truly gifted (great, as opposed to good or even vey good) are pretty rare. The district has a collaborative program with a local college for them. Out of 3600 enrolled hs students, two are enrolled in it.</p>
<p>When California revamped its school standards about 10 years ago, the new standards stated that all children would be taught algebra in 8th grade. Extrapolating from that, all children should be ready to take Calculus as seniors. That is of course not the case.</p>
<p>I see several problems with how math is taught, at least in this state. Pushing kids to be ready for algebra in 8th grade means that a lot of pre-algebra is taught in the lower grades, when not all kids are cognitively ready. Also, because of the rush to teach pre-algebra, a lot of number theory is taught very superfically or not at all. As a result, kids aren’t adequately prepared for pre-algebra because they lack a theoretical understanding of numbers and operations. I noticed a lot of math phobia among my kids’ friends beginning in about 5th grade. We also focus on teaching calculating methods rather than formal analytical skills, such as proofs, even at the level of high school calculus. As a result, kids often have a tough time making the transition to college-level math. I would prefer to see the schools slow down and take the time to teach math at a deeper, broader, and more analytical level. We pushed our kids’ school to accelerate them because they were so bored with the curriculum and tried to fill in the holes as best we could through family games, etc. Both kids retook MV Calc once they got to college and were able to learn college level math techniques with material that was familiar.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, on the flip side of your example in post 55…
As I wrote, D1 took two years of AP Calculus in junior and senior years of HS (junior year was the AP Calc course at our HS, the highest it goes here and senior year was AP Calc BC through JHU/CTY long distance). She took NO math in college as she attended Brown and it is an open curriculum. She did take one engineering and one physics course in undergrad school. When she applied to graduate schools in architecture, she did need math credits but her two AP scores from high school satisfied that requirement for her applications. She went onto MIT and it was no problem to not have taken math while in college. She’s always been very strong in math, but simply had no interest in taking more math if she didn’t have to. She does a lot of technological stuff in her line of work.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, which was just last year :D, it was exactly the same. The normal math sequence ends with precalculus in senior year and only a very small percentage of advanced math students ends up taking Calc AB/BC. I think CC just has an influx of parents whose children are in better school districts with these kinds of more advanced math track options.</p>
<p>CC parents and students notwithstanding, the percentage of college-bound seniors taking AB or BC calculus is still fairly small (I estimate an upper bound of about 20% for the class of 2010), even if this figure may be significantly higher than, say, 20 years ago.</p>
<p>Perhaps more importantly, while more students are taking college-level calculus in high school, fewer are prepared for it: in 2010, 33% of calculus AB test takers scored a 1, compared to 16% in 2002.</p>