Has anyone else dealt with this type of situation and if so could you let me know your thought process, what you chose and if you would do anything different...
Our DD13 finished 9th grade in June, having taken Geometry as her math class.
Our thought process when advocating for both of her whole grade accelerations, and in accepting the school's recommendation to further accelerate her in math, was to be prepared to sacrifice GPA for actual learning. Sure she could have snoozed her way to an easy A+ in 7th grade math this year. Instead she was challenged and had to fight for her A in Geometry. At the end of the year her GPA might be slightly lower than it could be, but in exchange she has gained much more value in real knowledge.
Would we do anything different? Not substantially. Maybe if I could think of a way to boost her confidence in her math ability. Since math is her relative weakness, she thinks she is not good at math. Frustrating since she considers me good at math, yet at 13 I was looking to take 8th grade math where she's queued up for Algebra II.
Best of luck,
--S.F.
THIS.
DD's transcripts reflect it, too-- that is, her ONLY non-A grades are in math coursework, but oddly,
not in those later AP courses.
We were on the opposite side of the divide that is outlined by the OP, though-- DD didn't have a choice-- she HAD to take a math class, and the ones that she was taking in 7th + 8th grade were honors high school courses... which went on her high school transcript. And were later rolled into her cumulative GPA, I might add.
I think that you have to do what
feels like the right thing for your child at the time. You don't really have a crystal ball, and so you CANNOT really know whether you'll regret the decision later. KWIM?
The really critical down side that I see to this kind (and extent) of math acceleration is that high school math teachers are rarely well-equipped to teach anything
well once one moves beyond trigonometry.
Even with training, most of them do NOT teach calc well, much less anything past it. At least DD's math teacher understood the math well himself. He just didn't have the grasp of spoken/written English to actually teach anything, or to grade written work well-- so he didn't. I'm not dissing him on the basis of not being a native speaker, but it was a rather severe impediment to effective instruction and feedback. But he
did know the math, at least, unlike a lot of her friends' experiences with AP calc teachers who just shrug when asked questions.
The instruction problem was the reason why DD effectively
de-celerated math after algebra II as a freshman. Instead, she took AP Physics that next year, and not Calc. Her senior year, she took some dual enrollment credits-- but statistics, not calculus, because I could fill the gaps instructionally with the former, and not so much the latter.
In her intake interview with the math department, they were
pleasantly surprised that she had
not taken CALC in high school, but HAD taken college level algebra and statistics. They were perfectly happy to have her as a major even without the differential and integral calc sequence. {shrug} I suppose opinions vary, but I strongly suspect that they like to know that a student has learned the calc
well as much as
early. The quality of high school teachers really begs a lot of questions on that score. It's also worth noting that even students who don't PLACE (via ALEKS, which a great many colleges use as a placement tool)
into calculus (differential, I mean) seem to wind up getting 3's (or better) on the AP exam. {sigh}
Us, we chose to "play the game" to some degree-- but recall also that "the game" meaning fluff coursework that is "easier" is completely unnecessary for HG+ kids to begin with. So "the game" for kids like my DD-- and likely most of those on the boards-- is to take as MUCH weighted coursework that "counts" toward the GPA as possible, in order to maximize class rank... so the trick is
actually to take the UNWEIGHTED coursework over summers, or get it off-site somehow so that it doesn't get averaged into the GPA to start with. Yes, that is a bit squicky, I think-- but that's "the game" as it is played NOW. DD
did drop an unweighted course (dual enrollment) and DID avoid taking anything at the local community college itself (because we were informed that those credits WOULD be averaged into her GPA, and would NOT be weighted like honors or AP is at the high school. But she didn't find a way to take health or PE such that those didn't get averaged in, either. Nor did she CLEP out a language requirement.
Particularly if they haven't been grade accelerated more than a year, I don't see calculus, linear algebra, or stats BEING all that hard for a 15-17yo HG+ student. KWIM?
