Over Christmas break I studied pre calculus. While I taught pre calculus last year and continue to help students in this course, there is always more to learn. I decided to study pre calculus for two main reasons: I am a student and I am a teacher.
First, I am a student. I want to review calculus. Since I don't teach calculus to high school students, I don't have the benefit of reviewing, mastering, and exploring the concepts in calculus each year. I was struck by the fact that I hadn't reviewed calculus in years. How best do you prepare yourself to explore the world of calculus other than solidifying your algebra skills?
Second, I am a teacher. I love connecting with my students in mathematics by being able to understand how hard some of these concepts are for them. If I am never challenged by math, how will I ever help them get through their challenges? Along these lines, I have students who are working through algebra and pre calculus in order to CLEP out of these classes. In order to help them be prepared to pass the CLEP test, I went under cover as a student at Modern States.
Modern States is a non profit collection of classes designed to help students review material in select high school classes before taking the CLEP test for the given subject. Each Modern States class is designed and taught with the CLEP test as the primary goal. Students who complete a Modern States class receive a code for registering for the CLEP exam at a local testing center. It's all very organized and thought out. If you have a student who has taken algebra 1, 2, and geometry; Reviewing the material with the Modern States College Algebra class and taking the test will ensure they won't have to pay to retake these classes in college.
Here are my thoughts on the Modern States classes. I very much appreciate the streamlined experience that they have created for reviewing a course's material. It seems thorough as a review course and available to most everyone. I do have a couple of caveats for you, as parents. The Modern States classes are written as a review of material that students have already studied. That was very clear. If you haven't taken pre calculus, then don't think that you can learn all of pre calculus in 6 simple modules from Modern States. The multiple choice questions at the end of the class are exact replicas of the questions asked earlier in the class, which is a bit deceiving. Instead of having 180 practice questions in precalculus, there were 90 questions each presented twice. Since I wasn't taking this class to prepare for the CLEP, it didn't bother me. However, I did complete all 90 questions twice so that the system would show that I had finished the entire course, this is clearly me being weird.
In short, if you are preparing your child for college and want to knock some of those college credits out before graduation, Modern States is a great way to review material that your child has already covered. If your children are not ready for CLEP tests, don't assume that you can't still use them as a resource. As both students and teachers, we should all try to take time to do for our own education what we ask our children to do for theirs.