Why are students allowed to skip levels in math but not science?

Though the school allows advanced students to skip math levels, such acceleration is not available for science classes.

Students are required to take Biology as a freshman and Chemistry or Chemistry Honors as a sophomore, with no exceptions. For advanced science courses, there are also prerequisites requiring students to have gotten a B+ or higher in Biology and Chemistry and taken certain math levels.

This is much different than the policy for math courses, where students can skip a grade after passing a placement test. For example, if students take Geometry the summer before freshman year, they can take a placement test to skip to Algebra 2 or Algebra 2 Honors for their freshman year.

Though freshman Saya Sivaram took Biology in eighth grade at the Harker School, she had to take the course again this year.

“The administration didn’t let me skip [Biology] because they thought [the class I had taken previously] didn’t cover exactly what I would learn here,” Sivaram said.

On the other hand, students are permitted to jump more than one level in math their freshman year if they had already learned the materials outside of class.

For example, junior Kevin Chiang was allowed to skip to Trig/PreCalc Honors as a freshman because he had done well in the AMC10, the American Math Competition for students in grade 10 or below.

“I just talked to my counselor, showed her my scores and she let me skip without any hesitation,” Chiang said. “My competition math coach also wrote me a recommendation letter.”

Furthermore, sophomore Celine Liang managed to take AP Calculus BC as a freshman. Before she moved to Redwood Middle School in eighth grade, Liang had taken all the preceding math courses while she attended The Harker School.

She took Algebra 1 the summer before sixth grade, Algebra 2 in sixth grade and Pre-Calculus in seventh grade. The only placement test she had to take was to skip from Algebra 2 to Pre-Calculus.

Though she had to take Geometry in eighth grade because she had completely skipped it, she was able to transfer all the class credits from Harker and enter AP Calculus BC as a freshman.

Many schools around Saratoga have more lenient policies for their science programs that are similar to the ones Saratoga has for math. For example, Lynbrook High School and Monta Vista High School allow underclassmen to take Physics or AP sciences.

“People should be able to at least sign up for advanced classes,” Liang said. “If there is still space after upperclassmen get priority, they can take it. If they don’t do well in the class, that is their fault.”

Sivaram suggested that maybe there could be a test, like the one for math, to see if one knew enough in an area of science to skip the course.

According to Science Club president senior Robert Eng, the school’s policy may be affecting its aptitude in science and therefore be a cause of deficiency in science competitions.

“Because students at others schools have more knowledge earlier than us, we are at a severe disadvantage at competitions,” Eng said. “Maybe if we let students take advanced classes earlier and concurrently, like how we do in math, we would match our peers at fellow schools.”

However, science department head Jenny Garcia does not think that is a good idea. She said that science is different from math in that it builds on itself so it requires more time to master and understand the subject than math.

“Very few students actually make the neuron connection between the material they learned in Biology and in Chemistry,” Garcia said. “[Our school is] already going at an accelerated pace; Chemistry should be taught to juniors.”

Assistant principal Brian Safine said that it is better to have the year-long building-block science classes like Biology and Chemistry because of the large amount of content in science.

“I think there are some computational skills in math that may lend themselves to learning on, but science is more than just computation,” Safine said. “The importance of learning high school level science continues to be essential for the foundation of future learning.”