Next year, Precalculus and Precalculus Honors will be replaced with AP (Advanced Placement) Precalculus AB and AP Precalculus BC across the CPS school district. The first AP Precalculus test will take place in May of this year. The first time students who will have taken AP Precalculus in the CPS school district can take the test will be in May of 2025.
The different class is not the only change the Math department will see. Next year will also be the year that Anna Rorvig, who is currently the head of the Math Department, will become an administrator.
Rorvig weighed in on how changes in the Math department affect the classes, “We offer so many different classes; numbers, enrollment, kind of determine how many sections we’ll have, and sometimes we add more sections than others so we might need more teachers teaching something than we have in years past.”
Rorvig explained why AP precalculus could be important for seniors stating, “For students that are seniors taking precalculus, that’s an opportunity for them to earn credit.”
The current Precalculus Honors teacher, Michael Westcott, stated, “We’re just renaming it and giving the students and ability to get college credit for it.”
This class could also be important for people who do not want to take calculus and instead want to take AP Statistics but still want some college calculus credit. The class will not be different much beyond the possibility for credit.
“Before going to AP, [the class] might have covered more than what actually is in the AP curriculum,” Rorvig stated.
The curriculum will be more focused on what is covered on the AP test. This doesn’t change much of what is learned in the class.
Westcott expressed, “Not a lot is going to change. Precalculus is precalculus.”
