You would have to be living under a rock to not know about the massive curriculum changes in the math department that occurred last week.  If you haven’t figured it out yet, the famous class invented and brought to Pine Crest by Mr. Perschbacher is officially gone.  Functions and Calculus Advanced will no longer be offered at the Pine starting next year.  Back in the day, the class was designed to be an option for students on the advanced math track to skip Pre-Calculus and Calculus AB after enduring the tough Geometry Honors class.  The following year, students would then be enrolled in Calculus BC, an AP class.

But now the class has been removed from next year’s curriculum, and students and parents alike have been furiously looking for an explanation to the sudden change.  One rumor for why the course was cancelled is that colleges have reportedly been complaining that they want to see  students on the accelerated math track take at least one AP math course by the start of their senior year, such as Calculus AB, which Pine Crest currently ranks below the Functions/BC track.  Last week, when Pine Crest officially announced the change, students currently taking Functions and Calculus were told that they would have to take the AP Calculus AB exam in May, so they would have an AP math exam score by the start of senior year.  After the school received much backlash by students and parents alike, the decision of whether or not to take the exam is the students’ choice.

Although that may sound great, there is still one slight problem: there are only about 9 weeks until AP exams, and we just learned what a derivative is.  In comparison, the students enrolled in AB learned what a derivative is way back in the fall.  Luckily Ms. Hernandez, the Functions and Calculus teacher, has been gracious enough to offer extended extra help on the weekends for students who opt to take the AB exam.  Unfortunately, in order to fit all of the content of the AP exam in the short period of time we have left, the mellow pace of the course will have to be greatly expedited to accommodate the students looking to take the exam.  Thus, there could be less time for tests, more material to learn, and an overall increased stress level for students.

Honestly, I, along with many other students in the class, feel like the school should have just waited to announce the changes to be put into effect at the end of the school year instead of right now.  Fortunately, we were informed Monday that the administration has decided that the class will not be geared towards the AP exam, but rather it will continue at its normal pace, with students having the option to opt to take the AP Calculus AB in May at their own discretion.

Despite the uncertainty for this year, we know that the school is looking out for the students’ best interests in the long run.  This change was not just hastily executed; the school has been looking into this for years.  When asked about the reason for the addition of the AP Calculus AB to BC track and subtraction of Functions (yes, that was a math pun), Dr. Tychsen, the curriculum organizer of Pine Crest, responded, “Our mission is to prepare students well for college and beyond.  With that in mind, we concluded that it would be beneficial for students to have access to as much as calculus as possible.”  So in order for students to learn as much calculus as possible, Functions was eliminated because the class was designed to cover a variety of topics, rather than focusing on one particular area of math,  like Calculus.

So there you have it everybody– the explanation of the question everyone has been dying to hear has finally been answered.  May Functions and Calculus Advanced rest in peace.