Accelerated math can start as early as 3rd grade in our district, but a true “placement” that impacts how far you can progress does not occur until 7th grade. The issue I have seen is that the same teacher teaches honors Precalc and AP Calc AB. If a student and that teacher are a mismatch, that student gets “off track” for AP Calc BC and has no option senior year except AP stats. There is a regular calculus class but it is not on the path to Calc BC.
Regardless, of the math issue, I have seen many parents that are also clueless in other ways about how the HS classes taken impact which Colleges are within reach. Sticking with a foreign language, taking perquisites so can progress to higher level classes, impact of unweighted classes on class rank, etc. all need to be considered. Our district encourages building a 4 year plan for HS but starts talking about the need for it with the build up to math placement for 7th grade. It is done in a very age appropriate way but many parents think their child “will be fine” if that is not considered until HS. Yes, they will be fine but these parents should not blame the GCs for their DC’s reduced options when it is time for college applications. Some do in a “it’s not fair” kind of way. I think that is what the OP is commenting upon. As long as parents are aware of the likely options at the end of the path and have their expectations aligned with those options, all IS fine.
@mom2and “To me Much2learn it seemed you were assuming that the parents of this kid were clueless based on talking to one parent”
I was talking to the Dad, but he was asking his checking with wife who was sitting two rows up with the smaller siblings. You are right that in almost every family there is one parent who knows a lot more about these issues than the other one.
@cheeringsection “As long as parents are aware of the likely options at the end of the path and have their expectations aligned with those options, all IS fine.”
Exactly.
I think that schools purposefully do not explain this more clearly to middle school parents because they do not want to put more pressure on students than there already is. The drawback is that this can cause problems for families who are hoping to be admitted to a top college, but do not understand how the college admissions process works.
Btw- you do not have to take calculus to get into elite colleges - my D topped out with AP stats her senior year and was still admitted to Northwestern, NYU and Boston…
The middle schools and high schools in my district always have parent meetings explaining the curriculum and course selection for incoming 6th grade, 7th grade, and 9th grade kids. I wonder the school mentioned by the OP provides this kind of information.
Wow, another school district where apparently too many students are accelerated two grade levels ahead in math, but the math sequence is slow-paced because inappropriately accelerated students have trouble keeping up with the math curriculum (7th grade algebra 1 should lead to completing calculus BC in 11th grade, followed by more advanced college math in 12th grade if desired and available, and appropriately accelerated two grade levels ahead students should find all high school math courses to be easy A grades and easy 5 on the AP test).
How common is this type of thing, which is a disservice to the those students who are truly ready to start high school math in 7th grade without needing the curriculum to be slow-paced?
Yes, while forum members criticize tiger parenting and excessive focus on STEM subjects in some threads, they also write about how necessary it is to push their middle school students ahead in math.
@BCalumnus “How common is this type of thing, which is a disservice to the those students who are truly ready to start high school math in 7th grade without needing the curriculum to be slow-paced?”
In our district, about 1/2 of the students take pre-algebra in 6th grade. 2/3 of those move through algebra in 7th and geometry in 8th. The other 1/3 has algebra over 2 years in 7th and 8th.
Two of our kids took the algebra in one year in 7th grade, and one took it over two years. The one year version is a very rigorous class for a 7th grader and has as much or more homework than all of their other classes combined. The up side is that it is effective at preparing students for the path to calculus by Junior year, where they can choose AB or BC. The students in the BC classes get a 4 or a 5 over 90% of the time, and there are a lot more 5s than 4s. As a Senior the best of these students generally take MV calculus, but they may also take AP Stats.
Counselors advise students targeting top schools to take MV calculus. I believe that it is true that AP Stats is more useful than MV calculus, but we were told that top colleges think that AP stats is not very difficult and can be easily picked up in college. DD1 received a 5 on BC calculus and took MV calculus her senior year and then moved directly to Diff. Eq/Linear Alg. in college. She received retroactive credit for MV calculus when she completed it. The next semester she took discrete math, and is taking a more advanced linear algebra class this summer. She is still trying to work Stats into here schedule, but it is crammed. Now she is working as a research assistant and the professor is teaching her the stats she needs to know on the fly. lol
It is interesting that many of the schools that pushed all of the students through algebra in middle school are not scoring well. Our district has been scoring well on AP exams but many people are frustrated that other district have been able to get all of their students through algebra in middle school. I guess the devil is in the details.
i find it pretty sad that any kid is expected to know they want to be a STEM major in the 5th grade…its a time when they should still want to be a fireman or a veterinarian when the grow up. its equally ridiculous one should be planning out the tracking so an 11 year old can be on target to check the most rigorous box as an 18 year old. kids should be encouraged to do the best they can at the developmental level that they are at and to learn for the sake of learning. for the FEW that truly need acceleration at that age it most certainly should be made available-but frankly, it is just that, a few, not the majority.
but then again, i’m clearly in the minority with a kid who is apparently lucky she can put on pants, let alone get into podunkU.
Students aiming at physical sciences and engineering will eventually need multivariable calculus, but that is best taken as a college or dual enrollment course to ensure proper crediting of it in college (i.e. a regular high school course may not be credited). Statistics is more generally useful for most other students, but high school AP statistics is often aimed at weaker-in-math students who are afraid to take precalculus or calculus, and may be unsatisfying to a stronger-in-math student compared to taking a calculus-based statistics course in college.
Since when is ANY advanced placement class been aimed at “weaker” students? I teach (or have taught) AP Euro, APUSH, AP World, AP US Gov and AP Comparative gov. There are absolutely tests where students tend to score higher (U.S. Gov) and ones that are tougher to get the 5 (AP world) but none of them are for kids who are “afraid” of the subject…
@UCBalumnus “Students aiming at physical sciences and engineering will eventually need multivariable calculus, but that is best taken as a college or dual enrollment course to ensure proper crediting of it in college (i.e. a regular high school course may not be credited).”
Right in DD1s case it was not credited directly. MV calc is Calculus 114 at Penn. She was in that class briefly, but felt it was too easy. Her faculty advisor then moved her to Calculus 240 (linear alg. and diff. eq) she got an A in that class and then received retroactive credit for 114. Essentially, she got credit because she learned the material, not because she had taken the course.
Her high school counselor was suggesting that MV calculus was preferred by college admissions because they would view it as more rigorous on a transcript, and that she could take the stats in college.
I think this is becoming more common. The problem with this fast pace, is the “race to nowhere” anxiety it creates I in kids and parents. I had an insane experience in our close to NYC suburban high school with my first D, who is now a senior. The kids who were on that fast paced track were given gobs and gobs of hw (my D had 7 hours per night and each night on the weekend), given poor teachers who thought the kids were all smart so they could figure out chemistry honors on their own, given poor scheduling (0 period, equating to a 7 a.m. Start time) and were expected to also participate in life and sports. My D burned out and we had no one to care or assist from the school. The kids who survived this regimine become highly skilled in organization and highly stressed, applying and getting accepted to heavy hitting schools. And the smart, regular kids who want a life (my D wrote to the Principal begging for just a study hall for the fast paced kids to catch their breath) can burn out and feel like failures. Dropping down a level completely reduces the stress load…but it also is so easy academically the kids learn little. So it’s feast or famine. In our HS your kids can get great grades and learn little by taking the mid level track, or be stressed out because they have to teach themselves. With my second, I left for another public high school one hour from my house because they seemed to figure this mess out…my second just finished 9th grade…retook Algebra 1 which she already completed in 8 th, but didn’t want to stress out, and is taking reasonable honors courses with good teachers.
I think our generation will be making decisions more and more based on school systems. Some public schools get it and some don’t and keep doing the same thing. And I think it will be getting worse…and we will need to make more serious choices so our kids get decent educations
When we went to a nursing session at the University of Iowa parents were stunned that you couldn’t be admitted into the direct admit program unless you’d taken physics. There was low level panic in the room from a few people.
@transitmom This is the odd thing. The best students are expected to work a lot harder than the regular students, and it continues to become increasingly competitive with the bar being set higher and higher, while overall test scores are not very good and are not changing.
Finding the right level of work to get your student a good education, admission to a good school, a reasonable social life, athletics, and other ECs, without completely burning them out, is a challenge for any parent. Especially when I keep hearing that 1/2 of college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. Parenting is hard.
“I think that schools purposefully do not explain this more clearly to middle school parents because they do not want to put more pressure on students than there already is.” Maybe they feel that the students should be placed according to their educational needs and not according to their parents’ unrealistic beliefs or college ambitions.
Our school district, while better than most and probably more high pressure than average, is nothing like the pressure cookers one can read about here. In many years, I’ve only encountered two families I would describe as “tiger” or excessively competitive. And yet we do still have some parents trying to circumvent the school’s already overly-ambitious placement process to get their kids into the highest math track in middle school.
“Since when is ANY advanced placement class been aimed at “weaker” students?” Come on. It’s well accepted that AP stats is easier than AP calculus and is often chosen over calculus by the weaker students. My daughter’s AP stats teacher said on the first day, “I know you’re all here because you didn’t want to take calculus.” There are students at our school who take both, but it’s a minority. I think it’s a shame because for many non-STEM students, stats is of far more use than calculus, yet some kids feel some pressure to take calculus which they may never need because stats doesn’t look as good to colleges.
Sometimes forcing kids into the advanced math track isn’t really good for them. Myself, I’m somewhat advanced - did all of algebra in 8th grade, then geometry in 9th, trig in 10th, pre-calc in the first semester of 11th, Calc I in the second semester of 11th, Calc II in the first semester of 12th, and would have taken Calc III in the last semester of 12th had the class not gotten cancelled. In the Calc II class, I met a girl who had taken the AP Calc AB (I think) class and exam and was coming to the community college to do Calc II. Same level as me, basically. She has a twin brother though, and he had failed the AP Calc exam, so he was taking Calc I with the same instructor. Turned out that when they entered high school, she was tested and made it into Honors Geometry, but he had been placed into Algebra. The parents threw a fit, however, insisting that he stay in the same class as her. So, the school pushed him ahead into Honors Geometry. He passed all his math classes, but barely, with low Cs. I think he got a C in Calc I too. He’s being pushed into engineering since his dad is adamant about his being an engineer, and he doesn’t have anything else he’s really planned to do with his life. I wonder if it might have been better to have just let him take the slower pace and possibly absorb the material better, but he’s constantly being pushed ahead.
“Maybe they feel that the students should be placed according to their educational needs and not according to their parents’ unrealistic beliefs or college ambitions.”
I am sure that is what they think. If they always got the placements right, I would think that was fine. Unfortunately, some of the placement is poorly thought through and the criteria are change frequently. The quality of the placement decisions can vary a lot based on the framework that has been established, and how knowledgeable the person is who making the decisions.
Additionally, within certain ranges of criteria where the student is not clearly in one group or the other, the decision is may be entirely up to the teacher and counselor recommendation. In those situations, I think the parents should be involved in the discussion.
One thing that interests me about teachers is how skilled they are at recognizing truly talented kids in their class. Would this teacher recognize Albert Einstein’s talent if he was sitting in there classroom right in front of them? In my experience, some would, but they are in the minority.
I am glued to this thread. I poured over all 3 Texas middle school textbooks, courses 1,2 and 3. It was so repetitive, and D12 did not need 3 years or even 2 years of it. She had the concepts down.
D12 is starting 7th grade Algebra I in the fall. We don’t have a tract for 7th grade Algebra. She had to take credit by exam to advance.