<p>Ooooh, my kids’ HS math teachers were incensed at how dependent kids were on calculators by the time they got to HS, and these were kids in the top math classes. Some learned lots of bad habits in MS and then got to Alg II w/Functions and had tippy-top students who couldn’t reason out the problems. I’ve been on other listserves in my area where this is a common complaint among math teachers. The folks who teach Alg II/trig seem to be the ones who bear the brunt of these kids’ poor preparation.</p>
<p>My math major was fine, but my humanities guy really struggled til he went back and re-learned what he should have been taught the first time around. (His Alg II and AB Calc teachers were MIT grads. Both had major portions of their tests where calculators weren’t allowed.)</p>
<p>S1 hasn’t had a math course in college where a calculator was allowed.</p>
<p>OP, a lot of school systems started pushing 7-8 years ago to get more kids into Algebra sooner, but in a lot of schools, the net effect was to water down Algebra I. We’re now seeing the results. A lot of kids were done a disservice, and unless parents happened to be pretty attuned to what good math instruction looks like, it is easy to think your kid is doing just fine. Let me be clear, I’m not knocking acceleration – one of my kids definitely thrived on radical subject acceleration – but in the process to get more kids into higher math, the basics went by the wayside.</p>
<p>GRE is now going to allow calculators? Bet S1 will be glad he just took the current version of the GRE!</p>