Not really a new thing (Score 2, Informative)

At my high school 10 years ago, I was not allowed to take Calculus senior year. An A or B+ average was required in trigonometry to take the calculus course. Other than pushing up the schools average on the AP exams, I didn't understand why I was not allowed to take the course. Trig is a small part of differential and integral calculus. Memorizing double and half angle formulas turned out to be a waste of time anyway (my professors later in life insisted that we be able to derive them ourselves, rather than memorize...) Besides, I had passed trig anyway. Why take trig again for a better grade? I calculus needed it for the university I ended up going to. I ended up paying out of my own pocket to take the course at a local university after school. Kind of a waste for me to be sitting in a study hall, while the class was already being taught at my high school. In the end, it worked out for the best. A university mathematics professor is a far better qualified to teach calculus than a high school teacher. I knew plenty of teaching majors that went on to teach high school math. Compared to engineering majors, they understood very little about mathematics.