Theme 2 - The Transition from High School to College

Summary

At the collegiate level, precalculus is frequently categorized as a “remedial course” and too often it is a terminal mathematics course for students who enter college not prepared to take calculus. On the other hand, at the high school level, precalculus seeks to prepare the best and the brightest to study calculus. In both cases, enrollments are at record levels. Not only are the audiences different, at the high school level, as a result of implementation of the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards, published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the way precalculus is taught and what is taught is changing. In this section Zalman Usiskin, an invited speaker at the conference Rethinking the Preparation for Calculus, gives an overview of what is happening in the high schools and comments about the transition from high school to college. Daniel Teague discusses precalculus reform at the high school level, and Eric Robinson and John Maceli give a perspective on the Standards vision as it relates to the preparation of school students, particularly secondary students, for calculus.

Zalman Usiskin observes that enrollments in college preparatory courses are at historically high levels, enrollments of high school students in calculus, whether advanced placement or not, are also at record levels, and on all long-term national measures of performance, mean scores have increased steadily over the past twenty years. Yet, in colleges enrollments in remedial courses are also at record levels and the number of mathematics majors has declined.