April 25, 2023

Earlier this year I read that the College Board would offer a new AP course in Precalculus beginning in the fall of 2023. What struck me right away was that, in my mind, Precalculus isn’t an “Advanced” course. The last I checked, the “A” in AP stood for Advanced. If a student takes the course as a freshman or sophomore in high school, they might be considered to be on the advanced math track, but taking a test offered by the College Board for a tenth-grade math class just didn’t add up in my mind, let alone taking it as an eleventh or twelfth grader.

On its website, the College Board states that adopting AP Precalculus is: “Preparing a wider range of students to succeed in math they’ll encounter in college.” The first bullet point under the category of Why Offer AP Precalculus states: “…the opportunity to earn college credit and/or placement and stand out to colleges.” (I might also note that on all three pictures on the AP Precalulus webpage, someone is holding a Texas Instruments calculator. All three. You can read my opinion on that in my next article.)

Really?  I can’t see many…