Yeah, but our only alternative is for her to have taken the course but without any real instructional support. Several friends of hers have done exactly that. We've been skeptical given the lack of instruction.
Rock and a hard place, that. I agree with you in theory.
We've tried to get a seat at the local CC for her to take more intensively taught math beyond algebra II, but the proximity of the CC to our land grant uni means that the uni uses the CC as their "remedial" math department, and both groups of students (Uni + CC enrollees) have precedence over local high school or homeschool students. NOBODY can get seats in Math 95 or 111-112, and without the latter, she can't get into 251 (Calc I).
Setting aside my theoretical agreement, though-- I do not think that most high school calculus courses adequately substitute for college calculus to begin with. I've seen a lot of those students-- and all about 5-10% of them do not have the math background that the ones who take calculus as college students do.
AP courses are too shallow and test-prep oriented to really teach much, we've found. Sadly. Is DD learning something from AP Physics? Oh, sure she is. But she's interested and she has us as a resource. She gets one hour a week of class time with that teacher. That's it. AP Calculus (and pre-calc, taught by the same person) is "taught" by someone without great English skills, and with little desire to interact with students. Ergo, those courses have an order of magnitude less instruction as compared with physics. The teacher basically grades what they turn in and directs all inquiries to Khan academy or Youtube.
