I sincerely hope you're not serious about this. I took algebra in 7th grade and I was considered a remedial student with habitually poor grades. If you're telling me I was actually 2 years advanced by present standards, then the situation in California must be deteriorating severely.
For reference, this was in an underfunded rural American public school. I was 12.
> San Francisco pioneered key aspects of the new approach, opting in 2014 to delay algebra instruction until 9th grade and to push advanced mathematics courses until at least after 10th grade as a means of promoting equity.
The school failed the most vulnerable children by objective measures, so they're just trying to get rid of those measures entirely.
Really, truly worrying that instead of focusing resources to help kids improve and overcome a challenge the answer is to remove the challenge instead.
On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.
When I was in 7th grade, we were taught "what a negative number is." That entire year was a complete and utter waste. But fortunately, 8th grade offered Algebra where I could get back on track.
This was 30 years ago, in California. Public school math standards are a joke here, and apparently getting even worse.
Hmm…
Worlds 5th largest GDP, internationally desirable cities, some of the highest housing prices that’s always being bought over asking price, often in cash - internationally acclaimed state wide university system, one of the cultural & academic centers of the nation…
I know it’s like, my opinion, but I think the situation in California is fine. I’d look towards the states that have ranked last & near last in education for decades without any movement in a better direction before commenting on California.
Even more, for those who do well enough in k-12 in those dead last states… well, they brain drain to greener pastures. Like California.
You know damned well that it's not many. California is a success because of immigrants from other countries and states. Think about the founders of the current top valuation tech companies in California. How many were raised in California? Zuck? Nope. Maryland. Sergey Brin? Nope, educated in Maryland as well. Larry Page? Nope, raised and educated in Michigan. Steve Jobs was educated in California, 60 years ago, so you've got that. Not relevant to this conversation. What about his successor Tim Cook? Oops, he was raised and educated in Alabama. Reed Hastings? Nope, raised and educated in Boston.
So while the above proves your final point, it basically highlights the fact that California does well for structural and historical reasons, like the fact that many VCs required any company they invested in to relocate to the Valley, and other things like network effects.
Kids with families who value education do better. Kids with parents who punish them if they don't do their homework do better.
When you isolate for income, there are large discrepancies in success between various cultural groups. Appalachian whites (my family) don't do well compared to many groups of the same income. The culture doesn't prize education, and even views it as being effeminate or "selling out". But that's only a small piece. A big piece of it is that parents don't give a shit about their kid's success in school, and that is very big in certain cultures.
My wife is the daughter of Filipino immigrants, and from the day my son started 1st grade, if he doesn't get all As, the attitude is that he has failed. At one point, I was going to argue with her, but I looked at my siblings, and my cousins (primarily white trash losers), and then looked at her family's success, and decided that she knew something I didn't.
My son has a TV and an Xbox in his room. The controllers and remotes are all kept locked away in my closet. If he doesn't get straight A's on his report card, all of it stays locked in my closet, even on weekends. We did this in the Fall of 2020 when he got all A's and a B+ in one class. He went all of the spring semester with no access to his TV or video games. He got them back in the summer after getting straight A's on his report card. (He's a 10th grader now). Contrast this with my poor, white working class siblings and how they raise their sons. My sister frequently complains about how bad her son's grades are (he's the same age as my son) and throws her hands in the air as if she's unable to do anything about it. He has multiple game systems in his room, and the last time I visited, when I woke up to take a piss, his light was on and he was playing games at 3 AM. This was a day after she had complained about his low C average. She coddles him, has low expectations for him, and ignores her own obvious parenting failures. She's a great representation for why so many American public schools are filled with thoroughly mediocre students.
If you have kids, get the fucking electronics out of their hands. If they aren't bored and regularly bugging you about being bored, it's probably because they are being entertained by their smartphones or video games, and you are fucking up as a parent.
Look at Nigerian American parents, or Asian American parents. Instead of doing what my redneck sister and many others do, and rationalizing the obvious differences by assuming that "they are too strict and are raising maladjusted nerds", imitate them. They will happily share their parenting strategies with you, and rule number one is that they aren't their kid's friends. They don't give a shit if their kids like them NOW. They care if their kids will like them when they are winning as adults.
Far too many successful people I meet complain about their parents being too hard on them, never stopping to look around at their current success and realizing that their parents made it possible.
I didn't take Algebra in highschool, so.. maybe? 5th and 6th grade were called Pre-Algebra. 7th and 8th were Algebra. 9th was Geometry, 10th was Trig, and 11th and 12th were Calc.
I agree with you WRT age appropriate-ness. Just because something can or has been introduced at a certain age does not mean that is optimal. I recall a study I saw recently that showed delaying introducing one subject - it may have been math - to very young students had negligible impacts on their scores (compared to students who were introduced earlier) a few years later. The students with a delayed introduction caught up so quickly that the delay didn’t matter. I’ll see if I can dig up a link - EDIT, I’m struggling to find it under all of the COVID-related student-delay-catch-up articles.
Yes and there are some kids that act up or learn to hate education and the system for being forced into what amounts to remedial classes. Sometimes the brightest children are the most difficult precisely because they're not being challenged.
The ideal would be to have every student learn at their own pace. Some children could comprehend algebra in 8th grade, others may never fully comprehend it.
Obviously that's impossible at scale. So the best we can do is to separate kids based on ability and interest. Some children can grasp more advanced concepts at an earlier age, while others struggle. That's why generally in schools we have standard classes, special education and gifted classes. The best schools separate it even further offering additional lessons or tutoring to children that are especially curious or require more work.
Everyone benefits. This is common sense.
There's no such thing as "appropriate topics" for an age. It's all child specific.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/01623737211008919
https://www.nber.org/papers/w17089
These programs are relatively expensive, and there’s a strong argument the gifted programs should be overhauled, or that the money could be better spent elsewhere.
I really don't need a study telling me my child won't benefit from a gifted program. It's a parent's right to decide for themselves. I personally know many people that have benefitted and it made their childhood bearable.
Barring a time machine or the discovery of a way to skip across a multiverse, this is an assertion without much of a control group.
That’s why we need studies.
In elementary school gifted programs are often tracking people into advanced math, reading, and other subjects all at once. Plus teaching them extra stuff.
At higher grades, if it exists at all, its often tracking them into a different school that has both more advanced and more diverse classes.
> A gifted program is where you take some kids aside and teach them some random extra stuff, at the end of the day they're still in the regular classes with the other kids also and don't really have a chance to go any faster.
I’ve heard of lots of different gifted programs, and most don't fit that description.
My kid's school did exactly this for "gifted" elementary school kids. What saved him was being in split grade classes in 2nd and 3rd grades where he could move to the older student's side of the room for math and reading instruction. Eventually, he skipped 4th grade altogether and ended up with the peer group he was already spending much of his day with.
In middle school, the gifted kids got to go on one special field trip each year. By HS, there was a gifted program in name only. We paid someone to run the "gifted" program but I have no idea what she actually did. She wasn't even available to assist in college apps and there weren't any special programs that I ever saw. My kid, and his most motivated peers, all ended up at very good universities in spite of the lack of support from the school.
Those are modern cut rate gifted programs.
The 90s had gifted programs where students who tested well got placed into a separate cohort for core classes (English, History, Math) in Middle and High School, or were in a dedicated classroom for elementary school.
The only educational purpose served was getting them out of the classroom so that more attention could be given to the dumber kids.
So much more was expected of us, that of course we came out learning more. 8th grade was a 20 page research project. 6th grade math was algebra, in 7th grade we learned logarithms and binary math.
When I went back to mainstream academics in high school, the difference was stark. In one of my city's top schools, students were still reading books out loud during class. Expected reading assignments were around a couple dozen pages a week. Math was all repeating what I had learned in middle school. Essays were a fraction the length and difficulty.
And in high school I knew plenty of smart kids who were bored to tears and misbehaved. Hell I watched one kid in Latin class piece his own nipple. (The teacher did nothing, possibly because said student was also pretty darn good at Latin...)
I wonder how a study is going to account for "smart kids who dropped out of school from sheer boredom".
Another aspect to examine is that behavior problems in gifted programs were, IMHO, much less than in mainstream classrooms. When all the students in the classroom are there to learn, no big surprise, learning gets done. Students turn in HW on time, listen when the teacher talks, and have expectations of not only themselves, but of each other.
Yes, gifted programs need to be accessible across socio-economic levels. The fact that I had to be bused to the rich part of town to go to a gifted program is a great example of classist and racist policies in action.
> while being fairly expensive.
I fail to see how gifted programs cost any more than regular programs. You are literally taking the highest achievers and placing them in a separate classroom for a few core subjects. For middle school and high school, there are no additional teachers, no additional programs in place, it is purely a cohort.
> and they don’t appear to make any meaningful difference in student engagement or motivation.
As someone from a poor working class family, gifted programs gave me the opportunity to rise up out of generations of being poor.
Gifted programs need to be made available to everyone who qualifies.
The fact is, one college graduate can help elevate an entire family. Every student needs to be given the chance to reach their full potential, and for some, that means placing them in an environment which has an expectation of academic excellence and lifelong achievement.
Edit: I just reviewed the study my local school district did to justify shutting down their spectrum program. None of the reasons (!!!) had to do with student outcomes.
I would suggest that your experiences may not have been the norm. Anecdotally - I was also in a gifted program, and it was essentially a waste of the school’s money. We had an designated educator for the gifted program, and we mostly did things that were interesting… but didn’t really advance our education a lot. Even when we did cover advanced material, it didn’t really make a difference because we would have learned it in a year or two anyways. That assigned educator would have made a bigger difference helping struggling students rather than us.
It sounds like your program was maybe better targeted than ours, or you were a better fit for the model than me and my cohort. But on average, the data seems to suggest that most students are not significantly changed by gifted programs.
9: 14-15
10: 15-16
11: 16-17
12: 17-18
Year 7 was geometry focused, Pythagoras theorem a lot of graphing things with protractors compasses etc. Calculating angles from parallel lines stuff like that.
Year 8 was much more algebra centric quadradic formula, simultaneous equations, expansion of brackets.
Year 9 was Trigonometry I remember there was a lot of 3d shapes and volumes. Volume of spheres, cones, pyramids etc.
Year 10 was Conic sections circles Ellipsis Parabolas hyperbola etc a lot of graphing again and more advanced trig.
In Year 11 and 12 I took the most advanced of the math streams I had two math classes. My other courses were Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English So math was a third of my course load, more if you counted physics which was highly math based as well.
Year 11 One class was Calculus focused, limits, fundamental theorem, basic derivatives and simple integration (Simpson's rule and stuff like that). The other class was linear algebra, vecrors, dot and cross products basic matrix manipulation and matrix transformation - reflectons skew etc.
Year 12 We covered parametric calculus, complex numbers more advanced integration and derivatives (Chain rule, substitutions etc). I vaguely remember we covered a bit of hyperbolic functions (cosh, sinh etc). The other course was statistics and probability as well things like sequences and series, stuff like binomial theorem.
I studied Engineering at uni and my first year university math was pretty much a repeat of year 11 and 12 math but a bit more in depth.
Seriously? Basic algebra was like 7th or 8th grade for me.
I was under the impression that (actual) communist educational systems were geared predominantly toward the most advanced students, rather than the other way around. Cranking out prizewinning physicists, mathematicians, and chess grand-masters at a somewhat greater than expected rate.
Not "educational communism" in the sense of educational systems modeled on those of communist countries.
The analogy is from "if I can't afford a car, then nobody should be allowed to have a car" to "if I can't understand algebra, then nobody should be allowed to learn algebra".
Read about Spivak's Calculus.
Michael Spivak is an American mathematician born in Queens, New York.
Your point reminds me of an experience I had in grad school. A good friend in the program was from (communist) Romania. We were both looking at the weekly math challenge that one of our professors posted in the hallway. It was something like construct with compass and straightedge the eight circles that are tangent to all three given (arbitrary sized and positioned) circles.
I was good at geometry in school, very good, head and shoulders above my fellow students. I really had no idea how to solve the problem and was fumbling around with it when I Romanian friend took a look and knew the correct approach immediately. It involved an isomorphic mapping of the circles into some alternate collection of straight line segments, solving the problem in that space, and then inverting the isomorphism (I think. It was many years ago--before the fall of the Berlin Wall). His high school training in geometry was clearly much deeper than mine was.
As for why shooting basketball 10,000 times day is considered heroic hardworking while doing 10 math exercises a day is considered being privileged and cramming and prepping and Asian? Well, that beats me too.
'Regular Teaching' works 100% well everywhere around the world where students show up ready to learn.
This is 100% a community/parent/student issue.
More conscientiousness, community participation, stable / 2 parent / married homes, 'Some Kind of Health Insurance', steady jobs, low crime, no druggie/prison parents, not living in fear, no gangs, no gang culture, other students who have normal levels of academic (and other) interests.
And they'll do fine.
Big reforms in Healthcare, Justice and for Economic Stability / Jobs would go a long way, but it will also take community participation.
It's not the curriculum or teachers. They work fine everywhere else, they work fine in Cali.
Kids that have something resembling what we might think of as a 'normal childhood' will do 'mostly fine'.
I had not looked at what it encompassed before I signed up. I was given a huge book to study from. I glanced at it briefly each day for two weeks and then sat for the exams.
I got 99% in all subjects. Apparently that was the maximum possible as the score went from 0-99% for reasons I didn't bother to explore.
It was disturbingly easy. And bear in mind that I was thrown out of my British secondary school at 16 because my exam scores were the worst on record at my school, allegedly.
That is good, but also consider that most people taking the GED have some sort of problem preventing them from completing a regular high school diploma.
Don't assume it's an academic problem though. My grandfather beat my father for years, until my father ran away from home when he was 15, consequently never finishing highschool. He got a GED years later, then eventually a masters degree. There are unfortunately many people in circumstances like his or similar, unable to finish highschool for non-academic reasons. It's important to keep this in mind because otherwise GEDs will be associated with poor academic performance, which is unfair.
A regular Canadian high school graduate is not eligible for admissions to many of the UK universities based on the little time I’ve spent looking at the admissions standards.
To contrast I earned some college credits during my last two years of high school due to advanced placement tests.
There must have been some use in taking it for you, right?
Otherwise, I guess I am missing the joke.
The oddest reason I've ever heard for taking a standardized test was from a fellow who was an SAT tutor. He would take the test in order to covertly write down good math questions onto his calculator while the instructors weren't looking. He made a point of telling me that when you do this, you have to make sure you answer most questions incorrectly. He knew other tutors who took the tests, got perfect scores, and then were told they couldn't take it again. There was almost pride in his voice when he said to me (paraphrased), "If CollegeBoard sees a 30-year-old man acing the SAT, they're going to look at him funny if he tries to take it again. If they see a 30-year-old man bombing the SAT repeatedly, they're just going to think he's stupid."
Doing this is of course morally dubious, to put it nicely. But I still am amused by the whole thing. There's a degree of "sticking it to the man" both in pilfering question examples from CollegeBoard and lowering the curve by an infinitesimally small amount when he takes the exams.
To add another anecdote, I know many people who have been through the prison system. Certain prisons will give you a test on entry to see where your skill level is on the 3 Rs. The firm rule is FAIL THE TEST. Do not try to be smart. The dumbest ones get the priority for school places in the prison. Schooling = extra credits = early release from custody.
I could be missing something though.
Politicians are not using math to decide which stocks to pick, they are using insider information.
edit: ok, it's clear that the parent comment was sarcasm now but you never know
99pi did a story on this some time ago. Having an election means that kids who are shy or not popular miss out. But who would otherwise have valuable skills and want to contribute. So randomly selecting kids but giving them an out if they don’t like the job ended up working really well.
Can this be applied to government???
The thing with schools in India though is, regardless of your status as a school, your curriculum is decided by one of the central authorities, either at a national level or at state level, and since the standardized tests for college admissions are the same for everyone, the variations in curriculum among these different schools are small.
Kids would repeat grades or have remedial classes for doing poorly. And the answer was to not lower the bar for everyone, but make students work harder for doing bad.
Things are just spread out from 6th grade to 12th grade and specialization only happens during the last 2 years of high school.
A: If there's a geometric interpretation :-)
In my experience, each year built off of the previous and implicitly provided a refresher.
I’ve taken though linear, diffeq, and discrete. Rarely use them. It’s a massive waste for most people.
They should be concentrating on what I would call “home economics”. That is, economics of the home. Edu on budget balancing, taxes, cost of things so you don’t eat out so much, cost of repair so you learn to fix things, etc.
If I recall this is how my high school was ~20 years ago and almost everyone still took at least 3 years of math with what felt like the majority still taking 4.
Those are unusually lenient from what I've seen; my home school district [not in California] currently requires 4 years of English, 3 years each of math, science, and social studies, 2 each of PE and foreign language or fine arts, 1 year of economics/personal finance, and 4 electives. And apparently 1 course must be AP, IB or honors. As a matter of practice, you'd be expected to take 4 years of English, math, science, and social studies, and at least 3 of foreign language anyways (and indeed, there's an 'advanced degree' that has those requirements; it looks like 2/3 of students graduated with the 'advanced degree').
I don't understand. US high school kids only do math one year out of the 4? And nothing else math related during the other 3 years?
I mean, instead of doing a little bit of math spread across all the years so you know, they don't forget everything?
Does this go for other subjects as well?
No, he/she meant that US high schools divide Math into algebra, geometry, trig etc. which are taught in different years as opposed to simply having these as sections in a single Math textbook which increases in difficulty every year.
High school is too early to divide up Math into these subjects especially if you are going to be studying only one of these in a whole year.
I went to high school in California, I was able to take all the way up to what was called Calculus BC, which covered up to learning integration techniques. This was in a bay area high school that was underfunded, and the majority of our senior class didn't graduate.
But the vast majority of students stop at Algebra 2, and struggle through it.
I think schooling absolutely failed me in almost every regard once I made it past the 4th grade. Half of what I learned isn't even true anymore or were partial truths/mostly lies to make it easier for a 5th/6th grader to grok and they'll be told "the truth" at some point later in high school or college only to never be told the truth or not have the opportunity to attend college where you finally would have been told the truth.
Exposure to something is the first step in learning about something.
This is true of most levels of education. What you learn in elementary turns out to be bullshit because of what you learn in high school which turns out to be bullshit because of what you learn in undergrad which turns out to be bullshit because of graduate school which turns out to be bullshit because of the work of an army of scientists.
I agree that the nationwide baseline is abysmally, or even tragically, low. This is clearly problematic in and of itself. However, there isn’t a standard curriculum for US high schools as this varies widely by state and town/district/school.
To me, the question isn't whether Calculus will be useful to somebody who intends to study nursing, but rather whether the doorways to other venues will be made that much narrower, or closed altogether. Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level, whether they wish to pursue nursing or engineering.
Children and their families ought to have a choice, including the choice to march forward toward their individual academic ambition and ability.
That's not true; the proposed Framework model shifts from a focus on breadth differentiation to a focus on depth differentiation.
You could just as well argue that the existing approach tries to force all students to be “at the same level”, since it neglects the differentiation opportunity that the proposed framework focuses on. That would, also, be wrong, but no more wrong than your characterization.
The Common Core does not neglect differentiation opportunity, and neither does it dictate or detail that children must be in one class over another; that is left up to each state. Under the Common Core as implemented in California, children may take Algebra with an Algebra teacher based on their individual ability. The entire Common Core specification for math can be read in one day.
The Common Core does dictate learning targets to be met for any particular official class, whether that is Algebra I/II or Geometry. The Common Core also emphasizes deep learning over rote memorization, but it critically does not require that all students must be at the same level. This is the central point of contention, and not whether the Common Core ought go even deeper.
As a detail, note that Californian classrooms may have around 40 children in a math class, and that penalties for classroom sizes end in middle school. These are the conditions under which math teachers must address individual variability.
Equitable Math would be a SOLID win for private schools and after-school math programs such as RSM.
Should we be striving for equitable or equality?
"Children and their families ought to have a choice, including the choice to march forward toward their individual academic ambition and ability"
This doesn't sound equitable.
Do nurses actually use calculus?
Literacy Rate of India 2021 - To know development in a society, Literacy is another proper indicator of economic development. For purpose of census, a person in age limit of seven and above, who can both write and read with understanding in any of the language is considered as a literate in India. ... Although India has raised its current literacy rate of 74.04% (2021) from 12% at the time of Independence in 1947, its still lag behind the world average literacy rate of 84%. Compared with other nations, Republic of India has the largest illiterate population.
I always find it hilarious that the pre college education in US is so messed up. Instead of doing Algebra 1, Algebra 2, calculus, geometry as one subject that you do in a year and then completely forgetting about it till the next time you have to do it, how about you do a little bit of everything every year from grade 8-12. Problem solved.
For e.g. in India you learn geometry, algebra, etc. every year from grade 6 to grade 12. i.e. You have a single subject called "Math" that teaches grade appropriate concepts in all the topics in math. Trains the mind gradually over 7 years instead of one big dump. In undergrad in USA, I cruised through most of my freshmen math classes because I had learnt most of it in high school.