When did it become common for high school students to be 2-3 grades ahead in math?

Parents Forum
61

<p>At our local public high school, there are approximately 2200 students in 9th-12th grade. The school usually has 2 sections of Calculus BC (~30 kids total most years) and 1 section of Calculus AB (~10-20 kids). The AB class is not a precursor to BC, but instead is for those who don’t want to do Calculus at the full college pace.</p>

<p>Calculus is a senior class and only rarely does anyone not a senior take it. In the past 2 years, I know of one junior and one freshman.</p>

<p>The school does offer both a math analysis class and a pre-calculus class. The normal sequence is Alg I, Geometry, Alg II, and Math Analysis. If someone finishes Math Analysis needing another year of math, but not wanting (or ready) to do calculus, then they take pre-calculus.</p>

<p>There’s not an AP stats class offered.</p>

<p>The school is not unusual among the local suburban high schools. In the smaller and/or more rural schools, even offering calculus is rare. The state science and math school sponsors regional centers around the state to teach calculus and physics to students who need it, but whose schools don’t offer it.</p>

62

<p>Our tiny middle school makes sure that all kids are exposed to algebra I before they start high school. For the kids in the honors track, they complete all of algebra I by starting in 7th grade, and then most finish it in 8th. A small number (10-15) skip the second half (or learn it over the summer) and take Algebra II in 8th grade. We also allow for acceleration in math, (based on both performance and testing) so there can be 6th or 7th graders in “8th grade honors math”, and in fact, this year there is a whole class of 7th graders in “8th grade honors math”. The Algebra II program is about 15 years old, and most, though not all of the kids in it do very well, and continue to Geometry (even the 7th graders or occasional 6th grader in the class, but as you’d suspect, those are the kids who do very well). Sometimes an 8th grader just doesn’t get it, and repeats the class (same class, same textbook) in the high school, and is still on track to take Calculus as a senior.</p>

63

<p>I want to reassure anyone reading this that it isn’t the norm to have gone beyond Calculus in senior year, even for the students who get accepted to highly selective schools. My D. is at a very highly ranked LAC and most of her peers took Calculus first semester of Freshman year at her college. This would imply that they either didn’t take Calc. BC or didn’t score high enough on the AP exam to place out of college level calculus.</p>

<p>So I’m not sure it is common to be 2-3 years ahead after all. It may just seem that way here on CC.</p>

64

<p>Math is generally taught at a snail’s pace, with lots and lots of homework problems after each and every tiny new variation in a concept or formula. For those kids who understood the concept the first day, it’s both boring and frustrating to have to wait a week or two for something new to be presented. </p>

<p>My younger son was so frustrated with the pace of precalculus, that he got permission to teach himself Calculus BC while sitting in the back of precalc, half-paying attention. He thus ended up finishing off his school’s math curriculum (including AP Stats) by the end of sophomore year. It would be nice if the school were to offer more, but the school needs nearly 30 potential students to make such a class a realistic possibility.</p>

65

<p>I find it so ironic that parents would resent other kids being accelerated in math. Do you show up for your kids soccer game and get irritated that there are kids on the team better than yours? Or that there are kids on the swim team who are faster? Why is it only in the intellectual arena where we have to assume that if someone’s kid is more accelerated than our own it’s because the parents are pushy. Or the kid is destined to fail or flunk out down the road. Or whatever.</p>

<p>I grew up in an age and a school system which assumed that most kids were bad at math. Unless you showed early promise (a handful) you got shunted into a college prep math track. The really great math teachers taught the small group of really passionate math kids (virtually always boys) and the average teachers taught the rest of us.</p>

<p>My kids went to a school which believed that all kids could be taught to love math- even though some kids would love it more than others. Great teachers are distributed throughout the tracks; all kids are encouraged to at least try calculus in senior year; kids are accelerated as need be. Gotta say- it’s a better approach to teaching math.</p>

66

<p>

</p>

<p>Where is anyone resenting it?</p>

<p>The question becomes, is the acceleration of many students in math *two<a href=“or%20more”>/i</a> grades ahead really due to the students being ready for the more advanced math (as some posters here have described students who were bored in regular math), or due to being pushed ahead early on by parents and schools, and then being decelerated when they reach calculus by junior year (or earlier), where some schools require them to spread calculus over two years instead of one.</p>

<p>A student who is clearly ready to take more advanced math should be accommodated and encouraged to do so. But it seems that being two grades ahead is so common now compared to before (when it was very rare) that it almost seems like there is a lot of “tiger parent” type of pushing. The earlier situation probably did not recognize all of the great-at-math students who were capable of going two grades ahead, but the current situation in many schools, where even the truly great-at-math students have to take calculus over two years instead of the one year that they are capable of learning it, also seems suboptimal.</p>

67

<p>+1 on what mathmom said. The kid came hard-wired that way. He wanted math and he wanted programming. I was dragged along for the ride!</p>

<p>S1 was one of those radically subject-accelerated kids. Wound up skipping 4.5 years of math. Our local school did nothing to accommodate him and he sat in 3rd grade doing 3rd grade math. The teacher would not budge. The one time we had to advocate was to request that he be tested for the off-site public highly gifted program. When he was accepted there, they tested him and placed him accordingly. Instant three year subject acceleration. We would have been THRILLED with one year. The great part was that he was then with other kids <em>his age</em> doing math he was prepared to learn. </p>

<p>But he was still hungry. So he started programming. Did Science Fair every years in MS so he could learn a new language. Did USACO training problems starting at the end of eighth grade, which opened a whole new world – because he needed more advanced math to solve the higher-level problems.</p>

<p>In our large school system, there were 39 kids in 2001 who took Alg in 6th grade or earlier (S1 among them). The powers that be decided this was a great idea and, along with a lot of other school systems around the country, started pushing for most kids to take Alg I by eighth grade. Problem was that they had to water down Alg I a LOT to get that many kids through it – and Alg II became the place where these kids got stuck and the teachers had to get them caught up. (Happened to S2, who took Alg I in seventh grade under the new, expanded access system. Fortunately his 9th grade Alg II teacher went to MIT and she got him straightened out! :D)</p>

<p>S1 went to a math/science program for HS and was able to take Lin Alg, multivariable, differential equations, discrete math, calc-based stat, proofs and real analysis at his HS, with his classmates. Also took a bunch of post-AP comp sci and physics classes, too, where he could use/expand the math. Some kids went to the flagship to take courses, but S preferred to stay at the HS and do additional self-study on the side in combinatorics, theory of computation and complexity theory. He even learned to love history and philosophy in HS, too. :)</p>

<p>Yeah, he’s a math major, wants a PhD in comp sci next.</p>

<p>This story likely would not have had a happy ending if we lived elsewhere. We feel very fortunate that S1 could get what he needed and thrive.</p>

68

<p>

</p>

<p>How fast a student accelerates is often a function of what and how much math the particular school offers. Math in grades 7 and 8, maybe 6-8, is just review of arithmetic and could well be skipped. So if a math-inclined student gets to learn “real” algebra in 6th or 7th, that kid is ahead in high school. The middle school might, however, run out of acceleration material before the end of 8th. But the same token, high schools often run out of acceleration material before the end of 12th. In those gap years, no learning in math takes place. </p>

<p>Math for both my sons as been an on-again, off-again learning experience as they exhausted what was available at their current school and had to wait until they got to the next one. Undoubtedly, however, if a course exists, SOMEBODY’S parents will insist that junior should be in it, prepared or not.</p>

69

<p>@ucbalumnus</p>

<p>Spreading calculus over two years isn’t a product of kids not being ready for the material, but rather of increasingly difficult coursework in all subject areas. With 6 other college-level classes and hours of extracurriculars every evening, very few students have time for all of the work that a full year of college calculus requires, even those who are interested in math. I’m a full IB student, 2 years ahead in math, and extremely thankful my math homework is confined to 45 minutes to an hour of nightly assignments. </p>

<p>In my school it’s extremely common to be two years ahead in math (so much so that anyone who isn’t “ahead” is considered “behind”). Nevertheless, the curriculum is still demanding, and I only know one student who opted to take a full year of calculus at a local uni (he was in the class his freshman year, so he obviously had a lot of time on his hands).</p>

70

<p>Somnambulant –</p>

<p>My daughter took Calculus BC as her first calculus course. They finished the course in a single year and I don’t think anyone in the class averaged more than an hour on calculus homework each night. I know that my daughter rarely spent more than half an hour a night on calculus (and did well in both the class and on the exam).</p>

<p>The workload for a course is very teacher-dependent.</p>

71

<p>I had the 6th and 7th grade side by side when we were trying to figure out whether my son should get accelerated. The books were virtually identical. The only new topic was box and whisker plots. Not exactly a difficult concept.</p>

<p>Neither my math whiz nor my less mathy guy ever spent an hour doing Calc BC homework. Nor did I way back when. (Of course as I recall my older son’s Calc teacher told them to do as many homework problems as they felt they needed to to be sure they understood the material.) </p>

<p>My math guy taught himself computer programming. If a math class hadn’t been available after BC Calc he would have gone to one of the local colleges or taken an online course. The idea that you should spend your life on the bunny slope because the local ski slope doesn’t have black diamond trails is ludicrous.</p>

72

<p>S1’s program covered BC Calc in one semester and kept moving. He never had more than an hour of math HW per day – in MV and Diff Eq, he had a problem set (five days’ worth of assignments) due every week – took him about three hours to do the entire set. He was thankful for the teachers who gave substantive homework vs. busywork. Guess which assignments earned better grades? :)</p>

<p>S1’s elem GT program hired a retired teacher on a part-time basis to teach pre-Alg and Alg I. The teacher had coached a number of MS and HS math teams to national awards. S1 says she was the toughest math teacher he has EVER had. She was phenomenal. </p>

<p>The math/science MS program offered math through Alg II, and kids beyond that were able to attend the nearby math/science HS program for more advanced math. The HS always had a first period Pre-Calc/Functions section so that the middle schoolers could get back to their school without missing any other classes. </p>

<p>S1 was not a big risk-taker in other areas in his life, but when it came to going for the “black diamonds” intellectually, he was fearless, even at a very young age. If you couldn’t teach him, he’d do it himself, and then he’d teach it to others. As he’s gotten older, I’m happy to say that he pushes his comfort zone on a regular basis.</p>

<p>S’s third grade teacher refused to give him accelerated work because she said if she did, “he’d have to take classes at UMD by tenth grade and you’d have to quit your job and drive him.” She was right on one count: he was taking college level classes in tenth grade. But I didn’t have to quit my job. :slight_smile: And if he needed to take classes at the flagship, we would have made it work.</p>

73

<p>My (anecdotal) experience with 2+ years acceleration in math is that it’s because the kid is ready, not because the parents/teachers/administrators are pushing for it. At D1’s middle school, a large handful of parents asked for their kids to start Algebra in 7th grade. The school policy was that there had to be a teacher recommendation that the student was capable of handling the work, and only two 7th graders were tapped. </p>

<p>I think that 2+ year acceleration was far too rare decades ago, and that even now schools may be a little too restrictive with it. In my ideal world there would be a happy confluence where a student’s eagerness/readiness for moving into Algebra earlier would then be supported by the school and parents. D1 was ready for Algebra in 6th grade but wasn’t interested in pushing ahead in math. So we didn’t push. I was bored silly with elementary school math by 5th grade, and could probably have started Algebra early. But there was very little support for such things decades back. </p>

<p>A local school district starts all students in Algebra in 7th grade, but spreads out Algebra over two years. Wonderful idea; I wish that more districts would do this, even if it’s over 8th-9th. D2 is totally not a math kid and has effectively ended up spreading Algebra over 1.5 years.</p>

74

<p>My daughter tells me I was wrong – there are approximately 4 juniors a year who take Calc BC at our local high school.</p>

<p>I know that there is a math test that kids can take at the end of elementary school. If they do well enough, they take Algebra I in 7th grade.</p>

75

<p>

</p>

<p>How lucky to have someone like that. What would happen if she happened to have a math PhD from a top school? People like that don’t teach kids what to do but how to do it.</p>

<p>That’s why DOE needs to make sure that talented kids have access to that kind of teachers, via the internet if necessary.</p>

76

<p>I think that the whole sequence of teaching math may have shifted ahead a bit from where it was when I took it in the 1970s. When I took Algebra in the 8th grade it was fairly uncommon, at least in my school. Maybe 25% or less of the kids took it. Now, I think almost every kid in Calfornia takes Algebra in the 8th grade. If they don’t do so well, they repeat it in the 9th grade (which was what my kid did - math is not his thing).</p>

<p>My memory may be a bit shoddy, but I seem to recall when I was a kid there was more of a bright line differentiation between “arithmetic” and “mathematics” such as Algebra. They started preparing my kid (and all the kids) for the notion of an unknown variable very early on - maybe 2nd grade. </p>

<p>They have pegged a lot of classes to AP testing, which may be why Calculus now stretches over two years in some cases. A lot of this is bizarre to me. It’s also my pet peeve. I feel like pulling my hair out when I hear kids say “I’m going to learn AP Physics C” - like “AP Physics C” is actually a topic in Physics like Maxwell’s Equations or the Laws of Thermodynamics.</p>

<p>I think my niece’s private school had Regular high school Physics, honors high school Physics, AP Physics B, and AP Physics C. What do they teach in all these classes? Only Physics C was anything like what I took for Freshman college Physics.</p>

77

<p>In California, at least the state standards for math shifted a few years ago. Students were/are expected to complete algebra in 8th grade. I seem to recall some discussion at a PTA meeting that this was under review again, but I don’t recall the details. For D, math accleration was just something that fit her needs.</p>

78

<p>The short answer is that it is not common.</p>

79

<p>lakes42ks, one of the most valuable things that teacher did was to make sure the kids learned from their mistakes. They had to re-do every HW or test problem they missed and turn it in. Drove S crazy, but it made sure he understood everything and that there were no gaps.</p>

<p>One of his HS math teachers (also a top competition coach) said he’s been asked many times to teach at the college level and folks wonder why he doesn’t. His reply is that he’d rather teach MV/DiffEq to 16-17 yos who WANT to learn rather than to 19 yos who are taking it because it’s a requirement.</p>

<p>Like I said, we were really, really fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.</p>

80

<p>

</p>

<p>Odd. Why not just have two levels, a good high school non-calculus physics course (which would probably incidentally cover the AP Physics B material, even though that test is probably worthless), and a calculus-based course (which would probably incidentally cover the AP Physics C material, though it may only be accepted as “light” physics for non-physics / engineering majors at some universities)?</p>