On greatschools.org , I looked up some top rated (greatschools.org rating of 10) public high schools in the Silicon Valley area (with lots of parents in computing and engineering) and looked up their AP math participation rate.
School
Location
AP math %
Notes
Statewide
6%
Aragon
San Mateo
16%
Carlmont
Belmont
14%
Cupertino
Cupertino
26%
Evergreen Valley
San Jose
22%
Henry M. Gunn
Palo Alto
24%
Homestead
Cupertino
20%
KIPP San Jose Collegiate
San Jose
14%
charter school
Lehigh
San Jose
13%
Los Gatos
Los Gatos
14%
Mission San Jose
Fremont
16%
Monta VIsta
Cupertino
30%
Palo Alto
Palo Alto
36%
Saratoga
Saratoga
11%
Note that “AP math” might not necessarily be calculus, since AP statistics and (recently) AP precalculus also exist. However, some schools may offer a non-AP calculus course less rigorous than AP calculus AB.
The percentages above suggest that, even in “top” high schools, math acceleration is nowhere close to universal. It also suggests that parents should not be afraid that their high achieving students are “behind” in math if they are “only” on the +1 track (versus the +2 or +3 track).
I wondered about the figures, and working back from the data from our school, it seems that the AP percentages greatschools calculates are out of the entire school. I am not sure that is the best way to reflect especially math APs, given generally (I know there are exceptions on the +3 track) it is only juniors and seniors who take them. Another way of looking at it: our school has the overall AP participation rate listed by greatschools as 54%, which it is if you look at total AP students/total number of students (noting freshmen are not allowed to take APs but still get included in the denominator). But the school profile also notes that 283 seniors (out of a class of 297) took at least one AP course, which of course is a vastly different impression about the AP participation rate.
Your conclusion that math acceleration is not universal would still mostly hold, of course, but the “effective” prevalence might look quite different if it was, say, % of seniors doing AP math out of total seniors.
“Districts de-prioritize math. While 63% of California districts ranked English language arts as their top priority, only 16% ranked math first, with math trailing both English language arts and social-emotional learning.”
Our current district changed the middle school math curriculum several years back so that everyone could reach calculus by senior year. The intent was to get rid of the gate keeping caused by early tracking. The first class that went through those curriculum changes just started their sophomore year of HS so we’ll see how it plays out. My guess is that they won’t see a change because only three years of math is required by our state to graduate and I hear about many kids stopping after junior year.
That said, I do think that for students that are gunning for the top colleges, it does seem like “everyone” is accelerated because they are surround by those students who are in that top decile of rigor. They aren’t comparing themselves to the kids who are just meeting the state minimum requirements.
At my S24’s feederish “good for STEM” HS, there was some chatter among the kids about how maybe the most selective colleges would “require” at least doing BC as a junior and advanced math electives as a senior (a few kids did BC even earlier and then 2+ years of advanced math electives). The college counselors assured them that was not accurate, and then in his senior year, 2 out of the 3 Yale admits had not in fact done that (for whatever reason, Yale was the most popular HYPSM that cycle). Many other admits to the most selective colleges had also not done that.
Of course that is just one high school and one cycle, but I think those college counselors knew that to be true, and it is consistent with what these colleges say as well. Reasonably challenging yourself across all the core areas each year may be a good idea, but then you don’t necessarily have to match every other kid in the world for Math acceleration, or indeed in your HS if it is the sort of HS where people are doing MVC, LA, and so on. Cool if you actually want to, particularly if you are interested in Math outlier colleges like MIT or Caltech. But just not necessary for highly selective colleges in general.