Scaling Summits Advanced High School Math

This week, staff writer Valerie Strauss concludes The Post's review of math education with a look at college-level work in high schools and what some graduates might be lacking.

For Gifted Few, Moving Beyond Calculus

It would be hard to find a more advanced math class in public schools than the one Robert Sachs teaches at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

That's because it isn't really high school math.

Complex Variables is usually taught to college juniors and seniors. It is offered at selective Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County because students demand the challenge.

"This class is pretty difficult," said Bobbie Pelham Webb, 17, a senior. "It is one of the first math classes that is challenging to me. Calculus was easy."

Webb and her classmates inhabit a world of extraordinarily gifted students fluent in the language of mathematics. Sam Rush, 16, a junior, has always loved numbers. In kindergarten, his teacher sent him to learn sixth-grade math. Luke Cheng, 16, a junior, said a great middle-school teacher turned him on to math.

To be sure, Thomas Jefferson draws some of the best students from Northern Virginia. But schools throughout the Washington area are pushing into more advanced math as the high-tech 21st century demands a workforce with a deeper understanding of the subject.

Although educators and employers worry that not enough students have a good grasp of complex math, more kids are taking tough courses. In Fairfax, 12 of 25 high schools teach Multivariable Calculus in the fall and Matrix Algebra (usually called Linear Algebra in college) in the spring.

The College Board reported that thousands of Class of 2007 students in Maryland, Virginia and the District took Advanced Placement tests in Calculus AB, Calculus BC and Statistics.

In 2007, the Education Department reported that the percentage of high school graduates who completed precalculus or calculus rose from 10.7 percent in 1982 to 33 percent in 2004. And although the ceiling was being raised, so was the floor: In 1982, 56 percent of high school graduates finished with Algebra 1 or less as their highest course. That had dropped to 23 percent by 2004 as students began taking more advanced math.

Such advances have been possible, said Thomas Jefferson Math Department Chairman Jennifer Allard, because more students at more schools are being offered algebra in seventh grade. Still, she said, the usual upper-grade math trajectory is Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II, topping out at Calculus.

At Thomas Jefferson, every student takes Calculus. The entry-level math course is called Advanced Geometry with Discrete Mathematics Topics. About half of all graduating seniors take the most advanced courses. What Sachs teaches is one of the three or four most advanced courses. (Sachs is a math professor at George Mason University.)