Wow! After I wrote the post below about Christian’s CLEP credits going into the community college, I realized I might be wrong about the number he had earned. I WAS wrong. He earned 15 credits, not 13. When I looked that up, his mathematics placement scores came up. Normally, students need to have completed Precalculus to start the first Calculus sequence. Christian took the test after having completed only half of Precalculus in homeschool. We were very surprised when he tested into Calculus. What I did not know until today is that he did it by the skin of his teeth. He tested fairly highly in virtually everything but Trigonometry. In Trig, Christian needed a score of 50 or greater to get into Calculus. He got a 50. If this would not have happened, both Kelly’s and Christian’s trajectory would have been dramatically different.
Hi Ken,
It has been quite some time since I have been able to read your blog. I changed jobs from working for the school district providing PT as a related service to their IEP to working in an adult day health care center. I wanted less paperwork coming home with me. So far it has been great and I will make substantially more money, which is always helpful.
I was wondering what your thoughts are on ‘Common Core’, or if you have even heard about it. I have witnessed the teachers having difficulty teaching the math. The school district that my children would have been in have adopted the standards and have been moving forward to implementing them in all the grades.
http://hechingerreport.org/content/first-grade-teacher-dives-into-common-core-with-cautious-optimism_13033/
Whoa. I am not sure I have much of an opinion on this. I have heard really bad things about it and semi-good things about it (from my Niece who is a third grade teacher in Nevada). I kind of bailed out on looking at this when the kids went off to Community College. The reality is that Kelly was about two years ahead of the “Tiger Mom” raised kids that went through government school while Christian was about four years ahead of them. All that without that aggressive government school cynicism/entitlement/passive-aggressive attitude. I am going to write something about that in the near future and I think I might take a look at Common Core while I am at it. Sorry I do not have much.