Is It Worth Skipping Algebra 2 and Geometry? A High School Teacher Explains
Last month, I was stuffing graded quizzes into my coffee-stained teacher tote after fall parent-teacher conferences when Mrs. Henderson lingered by my desk, twisting her son Jax’s 10th grade course schedule between her fingers. The copy she held had two media electives highlighted bright yellow: Advanced Digital Editing and 3D Modeling. The question she asked me is one I get at least three times a semester: “Jax wants to skip Algebra 2 and geometry to fit these. Is it worth it?”
Jax is a solid B student in Algebra 1, and he already picks up small freelance editing gigs for local small businesses. He’s set on going straight into digital content creation after high school, and doesn’t see the point of spending two years on math he thinks he’ll never use. Mrs. Henderson was torn: she hates seeing Jax dread class every day, but she didn’t want to make a choice that would hurt him down the line.
I didn’t give her a yes or no right away. I told her about my niece Lila, who said the exact same thing when she was Jax’s age. Lila loved drawing and wanted to do character animation for video games, so she convinced her counselor to let her skip Algebra 2 and geometry to fit two extra studio art classes. She graduated high school, got into a well-regarded animation program, and hit a wall her first semester. Her first major assignment was to model a small cottage with correct perspective and place natural lighting that matched a mid-afternoon sun angle. Lila couldn’t do it. She’d never learned how to calculate the angle of a light ray, or how to scale 2D coordinates into a 3D space. She had to drop the class, take a remedial 8-week geometry course over the summer, and missed the deadline for the program’s first internship shadowing opportunity. She still brings it up when we have family dinner, how that one choice set her back six months.
It’s easy to frame this argument as “only STEM kids need higher math,” and I get where that comes from. I see kids burn out on required classes they see no point in, and I get the urge to cut something that feels like a waste to make room for something they actually care about. But most people don’t talk about the small, concrete costs of skipping that most families don’t think about until it’s too late.
The first big one is college admission. Nine out of 10 two-year and four-year colleges require at least Algebra 2 on a high school transcript for admission, even for non-STEM majors like communications or studio art. That’s not some arbitrary rule, but it’s not something most 16-year-olds or their parents think to check. If your kid says they never want to go to college now, that’s fine, but 70% of high school graduates enroll in college within two years of graduation, and thousands of adults go back in their 20s and 30s to change careers. If those two classes aren’t on your transcript, you’ll either have to take them as remedial classes before you can start your actual degree, or you won’t get in at all.
The second is that far more careers than people think actually use the concepts from these classes. I suggested to Mrs. Henderson that she have Jax email three working digital creators he admires to ask what math they use every week. He ended up emailing a local 3D modeler he followed on TikTok, who replied back within a day saying he uses geometry for every single model he builds, and uses algebra to calculate project timelines, price his work, and track taxes and profit margins. That reply meant more to Jax than anything I could say.
That said, there are cases where skipping makes sense. I had a student a couple years ago who was already in a full-time tattoo apprenticeship, had a year-long waiting list for clients, and had severe dyscalculia that made even basic math classes cause persistent panic attacks. We worked out a schedule where he took a basic business math class tailored to his career goals instead of Algebra 2 and geometry, and that’s worked really well for him. If your kid has a documented disability that makes these classes detrimental to their mental health, and they have a clear, already in-motion career path that doesn’t require a college degree, it can be the right call.
For Jax and his mom, they ended up with a middle ground. They worked with his counselor to stretch the two math classes out over two extra semesters, so Jax takes geometry this year and Algebra 2 next year, and still gets to take one of the two media electives he wanted this year. He still complains about homework every time I see him in the hallway, but he’s not cutting the classes entirely.
I still get this question every semester, and there’s no one right answer for every kid. The biggest mistake I see families make is skipping just because math is hard, or because they assume it’s useless without doing 30 minutes of homework to check. Most of the time, keeping that door open takes a little extra work, but it’s worth the small effort to avoid getting stuck later.
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