The Temple City restrictions on class choice have great potential to hold someone back, especially those aiming to go into the STEM(M) field.
There’s this test you take in sixth grade to determine if you can skip pre-algebra and land straight in Algebra 1 in seventh grade. If you pass, your whole mathematics future will look like: Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-calculus, AP Calculus AB, and AP Calculus BC. If you don’t pass it, you have to take pre-algebra, and this pushes your whole future schedule by one year, only taking math courses up to Calculus AB in 12th grade. In other words, that test you take when you’re 11 or 12 will create a domino effect on your high school life.
Moreover, if you take Algebra 1A in eighth grade, you cannot take biology in ninth grade and you’re forced to take Earth Science instead, and then Biology in tenth grade. So your whole science schedule can be pushed back by a year.
Summer school is expensive just to make this up. It’s unfair for a person to be unable to take AP Calculus because he/she moved here in eighth grade.
This policy changes every aspect of our adolescence in TC. We will meet different people, take different classes in different years and have different courses that can have a big domino effect. What if that five in AP Calculus never gave you the upper hand in Caltech admissions? What if you never meet your girl/boyfriend because he/she was Mr. Howard’s favorite? We want to be in control of our high school schedule, not the young self still having to ask for parent’s permission to go on disneychannel.com.
Yes, it is true that Algebra requires a good foundation; however the fact that we determine our whole middle-high school experience based on a test we take while still learning about puberty is unfair.
Byron Briones
TCHS Sophomore