Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Any Reasons to Not Take A HS Course in Middle Sch

My DD10, 6th grade is being given an opportunity to take HS Honors Algebra this year. This grade will appear on her HS transcript and HS credit will be given. Our state does require state wide End of Course Exams which make up a certain percentage of the final grade for the course. This course would be given in a classroom setting with students from 7th grade; my daughter is already grade accelerated. She took her pre-algebra course as on line course last year so this would be the first experiences with children two plus years older than her. I know a lot of children on here take Algebra very early through the EPGY etc., but wasn't sure about actually taking it where the grade will be kept and averaged in with HS grades later. Any thoughts?

My only thought is wondering if she is ready and looking forward to taking it. When it all pans out, what else is there?

Yup. MoN identified the only reservations that I have with such arrangements.

The credit one is a big, big deal, especially if it sets your DD up to be taking college mathematics as a high school sophomore. What we've found is that secondary math instruction gets progressively less competent as you go higher.

In other words, we've opted to 'stop' my DD at Algebra II because calc is likely to be a waste of time. I know other high-ability kiddos that have bailed on AP calc for similar reasons.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts, especially Mon. It does fulfill a HS graduation requirement and shows up on HS transcript with the grade earned, but what I was also told is colleges like to see a math class taken every year. Don't know how true that is though. 8th grade will create an interesting problem, as she wouldn't be able to take Algebra II in a classroom environment at that school so I'm not sure what opportunities would present themselves in a couple of years. Because of her already being grade accelerated, I'm sure the 7th graders would know she was younger, but she is ok with that. Repeating Pre-Algebra would allow her to have a "fun" teacher too. Don't know anything about the Algebra teacher as she is new to the school, coming from a HS environment teaching Algebra. The biggest concern for my daughter is Algebra is only offered to 7th graders during her favorite elective so she would not be able to take her elective class and instead would end up in about her 4th elective choice. :-( She too is excited to take Algebra though so while the scheduling is close to being a deal breaker, I guess we will give it a whirl. It just has me a little nervous to think of my DD10 taking HS courses.

My son started high school this year with several credits-- counted toward GPA and graduation-- already. The biggest con I've found is a really small one: the guidance department had palpitations trying to do his schedule this year, and we had to pull him out of a magnet track we were ambivalent about anyway to make his classes fit. For example, he's in freshman honors track in one subject area, sophomore-to-junior level in another, and in another class is in with honors-track seniors. Throw in a must-schedule extracurricular and we had the freshman office in knots.

Pluses: he's a mature kid for his age and likes being in classes with friends who are juniors and seniors; likes his "math geek" status; is able to handle the pressure of being the youngest (and hence sort of having a target painted on him) in class. He'll be taking dual-enrollment classes with the local college next year in a couple of subjects, which I won't have to pay for. He has all his graduation requirements out of the way in two subject areas as of the end of his freshman year, so he can take either more honors/AP classes (if he wants to pad his GPA) or more dual enrollment, or extra music classes (which he enjoys), or just a couple of fun classes-- IOW, he has a few more choices than most. Thus far he's got an unweighted 4.0 (I think it's 4.67 weighted, since some of the things he's done haven't carried quality points) which ranks him a solid first in his class. And it's honestly been pretty painless. For him, anyway, it was a really good call. He might do one or two more, depending on how busy his summers get.

eta: the issue of mature outlook is a valid point. I think my son makes connections that are subject-appropriate, though. He's thrown functions into casual conversation (elaborating on a very non-math point I've just made) with a facility I couldn't have managed at forty.

I don't have any great advice for you but this thread has brought up some interesting thoughts for me to ponder. The schools so often focus on and offer math acceleration *partly* (I think) because it's so quantifiable - easy to see move from pre-algebra to algebra to geometry etc. Each class through HS somewhat follows the next. While our ds is really really talented at math (or so his teachers tell us), and while he likes it, science is his passion. I've always seen math acceleration as the path to allowing him to take science classes at his ability level early. I'll be honest, I have no clue what we're going to do for high school (he's in 7th grade) but I've always seen dual-enrollment as the most likely path he'll follow.

I don't really think (again jmo) that worrying about maturity re understanding how math concepts apply is a reason to not take algebra early - please understand, I have a degree in math, so I know something about it lol. I remember geometry really bringing connections for me, and then calculus as the place where the real world connections started coming together in an exciting way for me (geez, I sound like a nerd lol). I don't remember much about my algebra 1 experience other than where I sat in class and my teacher making fun of my school picture.. and it didn't ruin math for me or change the direction of my life in any meaningful way.

The one thing I'd consider here in this case is the loss of the elective choice - depending on the child. That would be huge for my ds - he lives for his electives even when everything else is working great in school. But otoh he's a kid who needs that other type of whatever-it-is that he gets through extra art and things like that.

polarbear

In my district, it does get averaged into his GPA, quality points and all. AFAIK it will show up listed under "____ High School" rather than "____ Middle", because that's where he's getting the credit from. Not sure if Virtual School classes are distinguished from the others; it's possible since we were told many colleges don't consider foreign language courses done on-line because of the diminished spoken content. OTOH, the plus side of virtual school is that you get do-overs on certain assignments, which means you can bring your grade up a bit (useful for those teetering between a B and an A, which, ridiculously enough, my son managed to do in his easy-peasy online Health class).
We actually started doing the work-ahead stuff while homeschooling, simply because...why not? He was ready. It worked well for us when he went back to public school, though, because there really was no way they could argue whether he'd really mastered algebra when he'd done it through the state virtual school-- and outscored the kids in the brick & mortar school's gifted magnet on the End of Course exam.

This is twenty-five-year-old data, but I took Calculus AB and Calculus BC during my freshman and sophomore years of high school, and took Linear Algebra in the fall of my junior year, but because of scheduling difficulties, I didn't take any more math after that until I started college. It did not keep me from getting into MIT.

All I know is when I finally got to take algebra in 8th grade it was such a wonderful feeling to feel like I was actually learning something in math--it was fun and I loved it. No experience with ramifications in HS of taking it in 6th. My dd skipped 6th and is in 7th now, taking advanced math (there is one level above her that is for super advanced kids). She has to maintain a certain test avg. to take algebra next year, so we shall see if it is an option then.

DD started racking up high school GPA as a sixth grader, too (again, with algebra I), and she was only... um... {counting} nine years old (?) at the time.



As of last spring, she was a solid 2nd in her graduating class, so it hasn't hurt HER, either.

I'd also be more concerned about what this does to the elective than about what it does to high school credits, GPA, or maturity with concepts.


This, though. Yes. It makes tracking/planning quite peculiar. Expect to be "that parent" in this instance. Of course, that may be more or less unavoidable to begin with with a PG kiddo.

Like eldertree, though, my DD did all of this via a virtual school. So her classmates begin the year NOT knowing how young she is, and don't necessarily ever have a reason to learn, unless she chooses to tell them. Which over time, most of them know because she has a core group of classmates that have been together for many years now...

but it doesn't matter because they all know that she's got the goods and is just the same as the rest of them. KWIM?