My oldest is not yet in the higher grades, I only know what the parents of the elder gifted students tell me about how 7th-12th grade. Much consternation, here, though, in light of the changes.
Our schools used to have 4-6th grade math compacted into 2 years, prior to the Common Core. Now this type of "acceleration" is thought to be a big no-no until 7th grade under our schools' interpretation of the Common Core.
In reality, I've come to believe that SOME of the 4th-6th graders (a subset of the previously accelerated group) DO need a compacted curriculum, while others would probably be fine with the slower approach the schools are now taking. The problem for my DD is that they have decided to slow down ALL of the students in the previously accelerated group. DD is left feeling as though the entire year so far has been review.
Meanwhile, I am aware that DD's experience is NOT the experience of all of the students in her math group - some have been so challenged by the new curriculum, that they have asked to be allowed to go back to "regular" math.
From what I hear of the older grades (7-12), many of the students were already accelerated. SOME of these students have gaps in knowledge/understanding. The school feels these students need to be slowed down, while other are starting high school in the higher level courses.
The way they have explained it to us, the future REGULAR course math students will be in many ways AHEAD of the previous years' students, because of the challenge of the new curriculum. From our perspective, it is a bit difficult to understand why this is so.
Actually, the Common Core could ultimately hasten our need for a request for acceleration. I think that DD would have perhaps been fine in the accelerated class (that no longer exists), but the "new version" is exacerbating the fact that she needs something different.
