<p>“I have to agree with College Board in their reasoning of splitting up Physics B: it was simply too much of a time crunch to teach kids kinematics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, fluid science, waves/sound/optics, and quantum/atomic/nuclear physics in 1 year.” My daughter is in Physics B now and she wishes that she’d had the opportunity to study it exactly this way. Her school requires a year of physics prior to physics B and it has been way too slow-moving for her. Changing to a sequence of 1 and 2 is better than a sequence of Physics honors and then Physics B, but simply offering Physics B as a first course, at least for the better honor students is the best plan and I expect that in schools which have been doing this, it will be sorely missed.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus, there are many bad physics teachers out there. Perhaps the kids who aren’t taking physics have been warned off of it. There are also some high schools with kids jockeying for exact position in the class (which information the schools unhelpfully are telling them) and creating a frenzy of cutthroat competition. Students trying to “win” this game may get a higher GPA boost from an AP bio or AP chem class than from a first physics class, this catapulting them “ahead” of the poor schmucks who took physics.</p>