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Friends and Neighbors,
It has been a long ti,e since I taught both physical science and physics in a high school. First, understand I am not in favor of physics first. Second, I am from Texas which from one of the postings apparently places me in the neanderthal class. Third, I have taught at both the university level and the high school level, the latter after retiring a few times.
I do not know if the following is relevant throughout Texas or anywhere else in the universe. My 9th grade students, mostly honors students, were indeed fortunate in terms of mathematical ability, if they truly understood which is the larger number, 1/3 or 1/4. In order to do Ohm's law calculations (perish the thought, this was in physical science) I had to spend about a week teaching the students about fractions. In this era of technological progress, our school system (like many in Texas) introduced calculators at an early stage, including the bloody awful fraction calculator. No knowledge required, just punch in the numbers as I told you. How in the name of all that is holy can one teach physical science much less physics when the arithmetic knowledge is slighly above primitive? If they do not understand how to draw a graph, how does a drawing of the gravitional force vs distance do anything besides confuse and bore?
If the arithmetic background is lacking, physics first is an exercise in teaching quantum mechanics to kindergarten children. Biology doesn't require much in math. Both chemistry and physics do. So, let us teach physical science (which in our case was 60/40 physics/chemistry) and remedial arithmetic in the 9th grade. I can't teach conversational Italian to a class of Iranians (and I don't speak their language) who do not understand English.
We manage to hype that mathematics is the language of physics, but if you can't speak arithmetic, you ain't goin' to larn much physics.
Too much of a good thing is wonderful!