My son will be entering middle school in NC this year. We may have the opportunity for him to independently take the required high-school math courses in middle school but when he enters high school he would still be required to take 4 years of math courses.
He would be left taking much higher level math classes than others which potentially could negatively impact his GPA. I had not thought of this but the school warned us of this potential issue.
I want him to be challenged and learn but do not want to put him at a disadvantage because we do not know how to play the "game" for college admissions. 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...I understand colleges want to see that you have taken the most challenging courses available but for our school district, no one else would be in this situation which is great if he does well but could be negative if he does not.
My general feeling is that he likes to be challenged in math and I see no reason that he would not do very well in the higher level courses in high school. He is quite young though and I hate to make choices now that could be problematic in the future.
My choices seem to be to have him take the required tests and accelerate through the high-school math courses or instead he may be allowed to work independently during math classes on courses I purchase for him through EPGY, AoPS, etc but take the end of grade tests on grade level and not be accelerated.
Does the school have math classes beyond Calculus, such as Multi-Variable Calc or Linear Algebra? My school does not, my son who will finish Calculus Junior year will probably take AP Computer Science as his "math" class. But my school/state only REQUIRES two years of math and to pass algebra. But the two years of H.S. math he took in H.S. do not count, nor are they part of his transcript to go to university. I had not sure what the one classmate who finished Calculus as a freshman is going to do, although I assume it's to take courses at the local university.
This is something to consider. On the other hand if you so in bored in math now, he might decide he dislikes math or do worse. I have seen this happen with a few kids. I have seen a kid get so bored in pre-Algebra as to be almost failing be moved to Algebra and start Acing the class.
Look at what the school offers for classes in H.S. I wouldn't worry that a bright math kid who was doing well in math through Calculus would have a particular problem with Linear Algebra and necessarily lower his GPA.
Another question is how many kids get accelerated like this. At my school probably 15% of the kids take Algebra in 7th grade, but only one or two earlier than that. It is really quite common these days for kids to finish Calculus by the end of Junior year.
