Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Disturbed by math program, particularly changes

To be honest I am a bit confused/worried about the AB/BC Calc questions myself. A friend has me concerned that if my son doesn't do honors pre-calc next year... he might be required to take AB Calc junior year, only allowing him to take BC Calc as a senior. I'll admit I am a bit confused by this and I'm not sure this is correct. Claiming there are some changes in my district in the next year or two.

Just tried looking at the college board document and I find it confusing. The way this is written it seems a school can implement it either as AB being a pre-req for BC, or as two different levels of the same class.

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-calculus-course-description.pdf

But AP Calculus is not necessary the benchmark. Keep in mind that if you are studying science or engineering at a top research university, even a 5 on BC Calculus doesn't cover all topics of a year of university calculus probably only the first semester. The topics that top universities cover is NOT the same as the AP courses. And what they expect as prerequisites may not be the same.

My understanding (from way back when) was that they planned to eventually get rid of the original/traditional track. But maybe that was just a rumor, who knows.

We did lots of proofs, our textbooks were ancient (probably from the 60s or early 70s), and the teacher knew her stuff. YMMV.

That's too bad. I just don't see how you can really learn it well without deriving the proofs.

I can't shed any light on your confusion as in our district, the regular (non-accelerated) GT students would take Pre-calc as sophomores, Calc AB as juniors and Calc BC as Seniors.

You're right. Many of my college classmates who got 4's and 5's on the AP Calculus BC exam chose to take 2nd semester calculus in college. Sometimes it was so there would be one easy class.

Well, in the dark ages when I was in high school, deriving geometry proofs was the norm. However, there has been some discussion that many schools no longer emphasize that. In our district, the regular geometry course has some regular proofs as well as some watered down proofs where you only fill in every other line or so.

I am not familiar with that Geometry book but at least some of MacDougal Littel's math textbooks are geared toward gifted students.

I don't know that it is so much a question of getting rid of Differential Equations and Linear Algebra as downplaying/not advertising it. For example, the Pre-Algebra program that DS was in last year was not advertised at all and the Algebra that he is taking this year is not even a program as there are only two students (counting DS) in the district of over 100,000.