The reasoning given in the framework seems sensible enough:
> Even for the highest-achieving students, pressures to use mathematics courses as social capital for advancement can often undercut efforts to promote learning with understanding. This often results in what some deem a “rush to calculus,” which has not helped students. Bressoud (2017) studied the mathematics pathways of students moving from calculus to college. He found that out of the 800,000 students who take calculus in high school, roughly 250,000 or 31.25 percent of students move ‘backwards’ and take precalculus, college algebra, or remedial mathematics. Roughly 150,000 students take other courses such as Business Calculus, Statistics, or no mathematics course at all. Another 250,000, retake Calculus 1 and of these students about 60 percent of them earn an A or B and 40 percent earn a C or lower. Only 150,000 or 19 percent of students go on to Calculus II. This signals that the approach that is so prevalent in schools––of rushing students to calculus, without depth of understanding––is not helping their long term mathematics preparation.
This basically lines up with my experience.
I was in accelerated math and took AP Calc AB in High School.
I got an A, but only by memorizing the symbol manipulation rules:
I could't have explained why they worked.
I don't think I could have even explained what calculus was for—and I was too busy
trying to maximize my grades in 5 other AP classes
to bother finding out.
I got into my first choice of college
and was sufficiently dissatisfied with math
that I didn't take any classes in it until I was required to do so
after I declared a major in Computer Science.
I took Calc II and Linear algebra and got Cs in both.
> Even for the highest-achieving students, pressures to use mathematics courses as social capital for advancement can often undercut efforts to promote learning with understanding. This often results in what some deem a “rush to calculus,” which has not helped students. Bressoud (2017) studied the mathematics pathways of students moving from calculus to college. He found that out of the 800,000 students who take calculus in high school, roughly 250,000 or 31.25 percent of students move ‘backwards’ and take precalculus, college algebra, or remedial mathematics. Roughly 150,000 students take other courses such as Business Calculus, Statistics, or no mathematics course at all. Another 250,000, retake Calculus 1 and of these students about 60 percent of them earn an A or B and 40 percent earn a C or lower. Only 150,000 or 19 percent of students go on to Calculus II. This signals that the approach that is so prevalent in schools––of rushing students to calculus, without depth of understanding––is not helping their long term mathematics preparation.
This basically lines up with my experience. I was in accelerated math and took AP Calc AB in High School. I got an A, but only by memorizing the symbol manipulation rules: I could't have explained why they worked. I don't think I could have even explained what calculus was for—and I was too busy trying to maximize my grades in 5 other AP classes to bother finding out. I got into my first choice of college and was sufficiently dissatisfied with math that I didn't take any classes in it until I was required to do so after I declared a major in Computer Science. I took Calc II and Linear algebra and got Cs in both.