Parents aligning expectations and reality

Parents Forum
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Carolina mom

I love your attitude. I have 2 boys myself, both are pretty smart. I told them before they started high school that we would pay for nothing, nada. They stay home and attend local college while working, or work hard in high school to receive a nice merit package.

They chose the later. Both have high GPAs, top 5%, 34 and 35 on ACT, along a ton of AP and ECs. They worked every weekend and summer since they came of age. Smart is going to school FREE, in my house. NO Bachelor’s degree is worth 100k plus. They are not applying to any schools who will not give them substantial merit aid. Smart is also picking a major that will result in a job!!!

My goal as a parent was to produce functional adults, who appreciate the opportunities granted them. Brains are 10% at best; work ethic, humility, and gratitude are the must have ingredients.

I applaud you in trying to keep your kids grounded, it’s the winning strategy at the end of the day.

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@mathyone- I don’t disagree that ap calc is incredibly challenging (yet nationally a high scoring test b/c by that point most kids have taken multiple ap tests and know how to score well) but that any ap class is meant for weak students. There are other classes for that - reg or honors rather than ap level- available at most schools. And not taking a particular ap course doesn’t make you a weak student either- my D scored incredibly well on the math section of the ACT and still chose not to take ap calc- b/c she knew it was not part of her intended career path. (Not all smart kids , like my D in top 10 of her class- want STEM)

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I am not in favor of forcing kids to advance well ahead of their classmates schedule.

Our district does Algebra in 9th grade for most students.
Kids who are identified as gifted can start Algebra in 8th grade.
The very top gifted kids go to a magnet school and start Algebra in 7th grade.

My DS and 4 or 5 others were moved 2 grades ahead for math when they were 10 or 11. My son did pretty well for the next several years and then gradually faded in terms of his math abilities. Most of the others did fairly well (Engineering etc in college). DS has struggled mightily in college math.

DD1 did the normal gifted progression which put her in BC Calc for her senior year. She actually got better at math and went from B’s in Algebra and Geometry (her only 2 Bs ever on her HS transcript) to all A’s in her remaining math courses, along with a 790 on the math SAT. In college she hasn’t taken any math but has taken statistics and advanced statistics and has done very well.

DD2 was on the magnet school gifted progression which starts Alg in 7th grade. She got a B and did not like math. People told us that it would be hard to get into a top school with a B so we made her take it again in 8th grade (btw, that turned out to be a lie as DD1 got into UVA despite the 2 Bs). By 9th grade she loved math and was the top student every year from then on in her math classes. This year she took AB Calc (that is the highest that is offered at her HS, vs BC at her sister’s HS). Now she is heading to college on a huge merit scholarship and planning on majoring in Engineering /and/or math.

I bring this up not to brag, but to show that in our small sample it was a big mistake to push advanced math classes early in life and a much better outcome to let things progress normally. The very best outcome was to start a little early and then make sure the child was completely comfortable before moving on.

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I have heard that part of the reason our district tops out at AP Calc BC is a lack of qualified teachers. The kids are ready for Algebra I in 7th grade but the district has to slow them down so that the lack of a teacher for MV calculus and above is not an issue. We are a smaller district and do not attract a teacher, or enough students, to have a full time teacher employed at that math level. 1/3 to 1/2 of each class takes Calc AB but not all get the required 5 on the AP exam to be permitted to enroll in Calc BC senior year. 1-3 students a year do online courses to go beyond Calc BC.

Calc AB is a class that goes over the top with HW. It was suggested that my son give up ECs if he did not have 2-3 hours to spend on the homework EVERY DAY. I will never know for sure since I am not in the classroom, but it sure sounds like an expectation of self-teaching to me.

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Re #123

Calculus AB is a slower paced version of college calculus 1 (usually a 4 credit course). There is no way it should require 3 hours of homework per night plus an hour of class time every day, for a total of 20 hours per week, equivalent to 6.7 credit college courses over two semesters (13.4 credits total). Seems like the high school has a serious busywork problem.

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And Calc AB is NOT the pre-requisite to Calc BC. Cheering- your district sounds nuts.

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@momoftwo61 thanks so much for your kind words. I really started to doubt myself and my judgement based on some of these posts. Our goal has never been to attend an Ivy League school. We just hope for a good education, a positive high school experience with minimal
stress and drama, a good transition to college majoring in a reasonable major where my son can support himself and be happy with his life and choices. What is important to me is not necessarily what’s important to everyone and that’s OK.

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@blossom In our district it is not a pre-req, but I have read quite a few comments on CC where parents have said that in their districts that was the rule. I wonder how prevalent it is?

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If your child wants to go into a STEM field, especially engineering, physics or math, taking at least CalcAB in high school is highly advised. It is very difficult for many people to successfully learn Calc 1 in only a semester, in high school you have an entire school year, including a few breaks and plenty of time to bring in a tutor or ask for help from teachers or parents or others.

Engineering physics is calculus based. AP Physics C is calc based and would be another highly advised class for aspiring engineers or physicists.

Our school district allows about 1/3 of students to skip 1st grade math and advance to 2nd grade math. They then combine 4th and 5th grade math, to put them 2 years ahead. With the dawdling caused by taking precalc, they get to CalcBC as seniors. This is actually a pretty popular track (30% of a top 300 USNews HS), some folks drop down to Honors / 1 year advanced at some point if they get overwhelmed. Then there are 3 year ahead folks getting tutored by PhD county education folks on Saturdays and self-studiers.

For an engineer or physicist, that now is all but differential equations, so you could graduate with only some review classes and then Difficult Equations. Those should be easy As.

However, college math is not AP math, it’s harder and faster … so that is why many schools discourage people from skipping too many classes in the progression unless they see that they really have mastered the material. With HS teachers sometimes not having the math background to really teach AB/BC there could be a lot of holes and theory - well high school no longer teaches proofs (nice post above on that) so what do you expect.

So the choice is to work harder in high school or work really hard in college (And not everyone will make it). In the old weed-them-out engineering days, before LEP and selective admissions, that could be 60-70% of the class or well everyone without the 650 math SAT and some HS advanced math.

Without hurting anyone’s feelings, for some people math is a breeze, so you can accelerate and enrich away and they never get lost or behind. If you could bring in college professors and keep stress down, they could be even further ahead.

CalTech or MIT, avg kid could probably have skipped 2 or 3 years of math track and still gotten As.

I am surprised by the GaTech level schools that start most kids in Calc 1 and delay physics, but I think this is a reflection of poor AB/BC teachers and mismatch between math understanding provided by a good to excellent college course vs high school course with mediocre teachers. The well-prepared kids get their 5s (maybe 4s) on BC and just shoot ahead, either taking less classes or taking some 300 level math classes … because they really, really want to.

2-3 hours means you are not ready for Calc AB … a good student maybe an hour a day to get through their problem sets and some additional practice problems. 50 problems do not take 2x 25 problems once you know what you are doing and problems 26-50 are really the college level ones, not 1-25.

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PS - state public flagship engineering and STEM math will still weed out 30% of students and I would guess they would mostly be people without calculus in high school.

So it’s not just for admission, it’s to get through the program in 4 years without a 2.1 average.

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@ carolinamom2boys I hear you. This stuff can be crazy making,lol. I’m with you. The whole Ivy thing is not, and has not been on our radar either. Maybe I’m just cheap. But the cost seems silly to me. But to each his own, as you say.

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Yep, for those majors where calculus is useful, I’d definitely recommend calc in HS. The idea that everyone who’s looking to enter a selective college (even if they are applying to be a theatre/journalism major) should take calc in HS, however, simply isn’t supported by evidence.

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I don’t think anyone should suggest the kids to take advanced classes without using some performance measurement based on the previous work of the students or some other insight.

I saw many CC students asking “should I take this AP class next year?”. It seems that they have no confidence. Students should have confidence when taking advanced classes, otherwise they will suffer.

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@PickOne1 if you mean the student may not be ready if they need 2-3 hours to master the material, you may be right, but I think the message was that if you were not spending 2-3 hours you were not making the class a high enough priority. I’m waiting for the AP exam results to see how well the was mastered.

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Cheering - if he gets a 5 or even a 4, he made it a high enough priority. A 3 is still actually a pretty good mastery and they can take it again in college.

There are other priorities even for a teenager with very good work ethic and drive than doing 2-3 hours of calc 1 problems ( and frankly there is not enough meat in calc1 to provide 15 hours a week of problem sets, I might go to 8 for good student and if you need tutoring, OK more). If you need 10-15 hours a week to do it, you may not be ready …

Like writing, basic mathematical literacy seems like a reasonable goal for all majors. Calculus might not be the right course, but AP stats is an easy math course, and certainly you need to make it to precalculus level or maybe a more practical business oriented math. You should be comfortable with business math, including Excel level statistics, accounting, graphs, be able to read a paper with statistics in it and understand if it is valid and what they did. You should not stare blankly and at anything with symbols.

I am always puzzled why an attorney who is obviously a smart person doesn’t feel somewhat embarrassed saying that they don’t like or don’t understand or didn’t take math … what is up with that ? That would be like STEM person saying oh, my I don’t like to write - oh, that is another topic.

I hate math and all that is somewhat of a cop out for many and the world is changing to be more technical and competitive. So getting your kids up to a certain level of math is important.

As as much as pushing your kids into Algebra 1 in grade 7 is nutty for all but the future Caltech/MIT/NMF crowd, so is holding them back until grade 9 when you have already made some career choices for them… no calc => no admission into engineering or computer science class they wanted … too late to catch up without adding another year and 2-30-40-50-60-70K to the mix.

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“I saw many CC students asking “should I take this AP class next year?”. It seems that they have no confidence. Students should have confidence when taking advanced classes, otherwise they will suffer.”

I think some of this is strategic. How may AP classes you take can impact your gpa and class rank, however take too many and you may hate your life, and end up with poor grades too. This can be further complicated by sports and ECs.

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Frankly I think AP Eng (both Lang and Lit) are the most valuable courses a HS student can take in terms of preparing for college. EVERY major will end up reading, analyzing and writing - even the STEMs.

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“I am not in favor of forcing kids to advance well ahead of their classmates schedule.”

I’m not in favor of forcing kids to do anything like that.

“Our district does Algebra in 9th grade for most students.
Kids who are identified as gifted can start Algebra in 8th grade.
The very top gifted kids go to a magnet school and start Algebra in 7th grade.”

We don’t have the luxury of a magnet middle or high school. In middle school, our very top gifted kids are in many of the same academic classes even with the kids who have severe learning issues. They are bored to tears and math is the only opportunity to take an appropriately challenging class permitted by our school. My kids did algebra1 in 5th and 6th grade and it worked fine for them. They got it the first time. All the kids identified as gifted take algebra1 in 7th grade. These kids are doing just fine. The problem lies with the other kids, when their parents who want to push their kids as fast as the next kid, and with schools that are placing kids in over their heads.

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@PickOne1, I agree that everyone graduating from HS should be taught basic stats and probability.

However, as I’d stated before, I didn’t take an Algebra class until 10th grade (did read an algebra textbook before that, though), and finished with Calc2 (our BC Calc equivalent) by the time I graduated HS (and ended up as a CS major in college) so this idea that if you take Algebra as late at 9th grade, then you’re doomed to never be an Engineering or CS major seems nutty to me. There’s no reason why Geometry and Trig can’t be taken at the same time as the Algebra classes.

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@toowonderful wrote:

I completely agree. In a parent meeting, my kid’s AP language teacher said after graduating from HS, some students came back and told that her class was the most useful. It helped them a lot in college and life.

Somehow this thread leads more to discussion in math and might make some people think there is a dichotomy between STEM and humanities and language arts. I think we should be concerned about the right learning level for the kids in all core subjects.