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I wrote the same thing, last night, but didn't send it. Maybe have coffee with one of K's teachers and run it by him/her to see. I know from talking to my middle school teacher buddy, he is constantly struggling with the latest nonsense coming down the line. There's always some `new' thing to try. His issue is, his school is a feeder to one particular high school. The math teachers there didn't like his student's preparation, but he couldn't get them to give him a sample entrance test. He finally got one attached to an e-mail, after he befriended one of them. Here was the issue. Manipulation and reduction of second and third degree polynomials can get really hairy. So how much time do you spend on those methods and how far do you develop that skill? With a sample test in hand, he found out.
The teacher side really gets no press at all.
And another thing to think about which doesn't bare on writing the article, but is a side issue. There is no fixed set called `calculus' I took it twice, once for non-majors, once for mainline math and physical sciences. The two classes were barely recognizable. So, what that means is that whatever they propose to teach in 11th grade might be considerably different than what's expected at say UCB. The math dept has a short test up on their web page for students to test themselves. If you have taken calculus in high school and you pass this test, you can skip the first semester of Math 1A and start with B. So you get one semester credit for a year of high school work. Of course this also assumes you passed the SATs with flying colors.
In the further background, deep background, if you play around with math for interest, you realize all that stuff you learned might apply to physics and engineering, but that it didn't have much to do with math as mathematicians see math.
Anyway, it's a good article. I don't know how many words, but I'd expand it to fit whatever is a short newspaper piece.
CG