Which reminds me: my math professor sibling observes that precalculus as a course exists only because of the lack of rigor in alg II/trig courses, as there is no additional material required to access calculus. This sounds like a related effect to the dumbing down of alg II courses.
Wow. I'd heard someone mention that before, and I'm curious. I'm not from the USA, and my kids are young, so I don't know much about these courses other than their names. I don't want my kids to spend an extra year on a nothing course (or to need to do it due to weakened earlier courses).
On the other hand AoPS has not only a precalc course, but also an Algebra 3, course in their course sequence, and they claim they're not redundant. So I'm confused.
