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A couple of weeks ago, my Uber driver was a math teacher in the San Francisco school district. He advised me that if I could afford it, that I should unequivoc

A couple of weeks ago, my Uber driver was a math teacher in the San Francisco school district. He advised me that if I could afford it, that I should unequivocally send my kids to private school and not to public school. The reason is that they now mix students of all abilities together, instead of separating them out and concentrating on each group separately like they did when we were kids. The thought was the good students would "pull up" and "positively influence" the students with less aptitude. However, what it did instead was to give the incentive to teachers to focus on worse students, who tended to be more disruptive, and essentially abandon the good students and let them fend for themselves. He mentioned that the "independent learners" were identified, and instead of being accelerated, they were left alone so that the poorer students could be concentrated on by the teachers. As a side note, I don't remember being taught algebra before the 9th grade either, in an excellent school district, and I was in a gifted class. I still kept my algebra textbook from the 10th grade and it's pretty standard algebra. In fact, I didn't even learn Calculus until college and I wasn't negatively impacted by that at all. However, this was almost 30 years ago so I'm sure educational standards have increased, but it's funny that what I learned back then is no longer "good enough".

pc86 10y ago
I'm 30 now and had a similar math education to you. Gifted track in middle/HS yet no algebra until 9th grade. No Calculus at all (although AP Calc was one of four AP classes my school offered). I did not major in CS so I've never taken a formal Calc class. If anyone has a good recommendation for a MOOC or similar for a working professional to learn Calculus I'd love to take it. Doesn't need to be free, would probably be more motivated to do well if it wasn't :)
- clintonb 10y ago
  https://www.edx.org/high-school https://www.edx.org/high-school
- onn_ 10y ago
  Coursera has a class called Calculus One for people with no previous calculus experience and another called Single Variable Calculus for people who've been exposed to it once. Pick your difficulty and there's an optional certificate you can pay for. The latter was definitely one of the best MOOCs I've taken.
- sidusknight 10y ago
  MIT offers a three-part calc series over EDX which seems good: https://www.edx.org/course/calculus-1a-differentiation-mitx-18-01-1x https://www.edx.org/course/calculus-1a-differentiation-mitx-... Paul's notes (http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/) is apparently a really good reference too.
- mikecsh 10y ago
  Do they actually call it a "gifted" track?!
  - alistairSH 10y ago
    Yes. What do they call it where you attended school? In the US, the term used is "Gifted & Talented" (abbreviated to "GT"). So, you frequently see courses or tracks labelled "gifted", "GT", etc. At the high-school level, the label frequently changes to "honors" or "advanced". And you will also see Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) which are brand names for honors/advanced curriculums that often offer college credit with high marks on exams.
    - mikecsh 10y ago
      Oh that's really interesting! I went to school in the UK and they just divided it into numbered sets e.g Set 1 (top set) to Set 6 (bottom set). The US naming is an interesting affirmation of the child's difference from their peers - I've not heard of that sort of thing over here.
lettergram 10y ago
I didn't take calculus until college either and I entered college 5-6 years ago. So, the educational standards seem pretty consistent to 30 years ago. I wasn't in any way effected and graduated with a C.S. in Engineering Degree from UIUC. I also would have had a degree in mathematics, had a dual C.S. and Mathematics degree been allowed. So I would sweat over it. That being said, I would never dream of sending my kid to public school regardless. Speaking of splitting kids up, I was placed into the "trouble" kids group (probably due to dyslexia or apathy) until I was eventually identified as "gifted" 6-7 years later[1]... I seriously think I have a slight bit of PTSD dealing with the screaming in a classroom all those years. Mixing students is probably a hell of a lot worse than not. Then again S.F. is all about being "equal" to the point of insanity. [1] http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/ http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/
- dpark 10y ago
  I took a year of calculus in high school and took 3 semesters of calculus later in college. The first semester of college calculus covered all of the high school material and then some, and I don't think my year of high school calculus really mattered. On the subject of mixing, I think mixing students is probably better overall. The "trouble" group is the result of splitting them out. You don't end up with a whole room of problematic kids and a couple of misidentified gifted kids when they are mixed. The only way it makes sense to split out the problematic kids is if they get a lower student:teacher ratio. They need more attention.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    > I took a year of calculus in high school and took 3 semesters of calculus later in college. Probably not AP, so the college wouldn't accept it, right? That's the rub, really. Though to be honest my HS calculus was more like an intro with College being much more complex.
    - dpark 10y ago
      Yeah, my high school didn't offer AP calc. They did offer a few AP classes like English, which I took but never transferred anyway.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
stdbrouw 10y ago
It will of course depend on the exact situation of a particular classroom, but FWIW, research is very mixed on tracking (separating students according to ability) and gifted classes. See e.g. Jo Boaler's "When even the winners are losers" about how gifted students can come to hate mathematics because of all of the pressure that's being put on them in accelerated classes.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- criddell 10y ago
  My kids are in public school in Texas and overall I'm very happy with their mathematics classes. They do separate kids by ability and interest and some of the kids do feel a lot of pressure. But the pressure is mostly coming from parents, not the school. They also have reversed the classes and it works wonderfully for my kids. Every night, they are assigned a video to watch (something very similar in nature to Khan Academy videos) and the next day they work through problems in class. It works well for my kids because they learn by doing and so it seems that spending classroom time on that part makes sense.
samnwa 10y ago
It's funny because if you know education's history this is a debate that has gone back and forth every other decade. Before "we" were in school when mixed abilities were separated, mixed abilities were in one class. No doubt in another few years, we will go back to believing that separating based on ability is ideal. At the end of the day, the important thing is to focus on goals / outcomes rather than magic solutions to enable learning.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Isn't the result of almost all studies that mixed ability classes HELPS the under performing and HURTS the top performing? Seems fairly obvious. In a class with 5 bad, 10 average, and 5 smart kids... the teacher will focus most effort on the 5 bad kids. They will get much more attention compared to a class with 10 bad and 10 average kids... of course the losers being the 5 smart kids who get basically ignored. So tragedy of the commons says I want my, top performing, kid to be in a gifted only class to maximize his potential. But as a society I want all kids grouped, as bringing up the average knowledge of the country is a very good goal (and important when you realize things such as everyone gets 1 vote, no matter intelligence).
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    A good teacher will use the gifted students to help teach the poorer students. And teaching a subject is a great way to ensure that you have a full understanding of it.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      What % of teachers are "good"? Again, we often need to optimize for the "mediocre teacher". At least in the US we pay our teachers less than we pay our garbage truck drivers, I am not sure we can count on "most" being "good". Which is not to diss teachers, but to be sad that we don't value them enough.
      - Retric 10y ago
dietrichepp 10y ago
I remember when I was a kid in Portland, OR public schools, the district figured out a way to teach me algebra in 4th grade. The rules (or laws, I can't remember) mandated that the district make accommodations to teach students at the appropriate rate and level. The pendulum seems to swing back and forth, however. There are parents that insist that their child is gifted, enough parents to cause trouble with school boards. For one of my friends, apparently his parents requested that he not be placed in the same class as me, because I was better than him in one or two disciplines. Parents are crazy. I understand the desire to succeed, but I can't relate to people who want to be the smartest person in the room.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Are you sure it was because they wanted him to be the smartest in the room, and not that they were trying to make sure that he wasn't stressed out learning at a pace that he wasn't ready for?
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    The classes weren't separated by ability, so he would have been learning at the same pace had he been placed in my class.
- wj 10y ago
  I also grew up in the Portland area and had a "TAG" program for the fourth and fifth grades. Due to a state law that changed the way state funds were allocated amongst districts it was discontinued prior to the sixth grade (along with the sixth grade trip). I went from being challenged to completely bored and starting getting in a lot of trouble which was something that lasted through middle school. My oldest child is still a year away from kindergarten and from the conversations I have had with elementary school administrators it sounds like they don't really have any formal plan to handle kids that are more advanced in certain subjects. They definitely don't use the terms "talented" or "gifted" anymore. Not sure if my child would be qualified for a program like that in the future but it would be good to know that it was be available.
alistairSH 10y ago
As noted in a sibling, educators have flip-flopped on mixing achievement levels for decades or more. I was a casualty of one such experiment in Fairfax County, VA. My year, and my year only, instead of offering the usual 7th grade honors "pre-Algebra" course, they mixed the honors students with lower achieving students. It was an unmitigated disaster for those of on the honors end of the spectrum. When we entered Algebra in 8th grade, we were all well behind the expected knowledge level. I feel like it hurt me the rest of the way through high school. As far as I can tell (from loads in internet research), Algebra-For-All and similar mixed courses have benefits for the average and below-average students, but the price is stunting the development of advanced learners.
javier2 10y ago
This is how the Norwegian system works. It's shit if you learn quicker than the others, and all time is spent on the 3 most disruptive pupils.
Nadya 10y ago
>As a side note, I don't remember being taught algebra before the 9th grade either, in an excellent school district, and I was in a gifted class. I still kept my algebra textbook from the 10th grade and it's pretty standard algebra. In fact, I didn't even learn Calculus until college and I wasn't negatively impacted by that at all. However, this was almost 30 years ago so I'm sure educational standards have increased, but it's funny that what I learned back then is no longer "good enough". When I learned algebra it was taught in the 8th grade or 7th grade AP. My younger sibling (only a decade apart) was learning it in the 6th grade while not placed in an advanced class. It will vary by state and school district, I imagine. It also appears to me that Preschool is less and less "optional" and more and more "required" with many expectations for Kindergarten students to know things that would have been taught to students who attended Preschool, so students who did not attend Preschool are already behind their peers before even entering the 1st grade...

pc86 10y ago

I'm 30 now and had a similar math education to you. Gifted track in middle/HS yet no algebra until 9th grade. No Calculus at all (although AP Calc was one of four AP classes my school offered). I did not major in CS so I've never taken a formal Calc class. If anyone has a good recommendation for a MOOC or similar for a working professional to learn Calculus I'd love to take it. Doesn't need to be free, would probably be more motivated to do well if it wasn't :)

clintonb 10y ago
https://www.edx.org/high-school https://www.edx.org/high-school
onn_ 10y ago
Coursera has a class called Calculus One for people with no previous calculus experience and another called Single Variable Calculus for people who've been exposed to it once. Pick your difficulty and there's an optional certificate you can pay for. The latter was definitely one of the best MOOCs I've taken.
sidusknight 10y ago
MIT offers a three-part calc series over EDX which seems good: https://www.edx.org/course/calculus-1a-differentiation-mitx-18-01-1x https://www.edx.org/course/calculus-1a-differentiation-mitx-... Paul's notes (http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/) is apparently a really good reference too.
mikecsh 10y ago
Do they actually call it a "gifted" track?!
- alistairSH 10y ago
  Yes. What do they call it where you attended school? In the US, the term used is "Gifted & Talented" (abbreviated to "GT"). So, you frequently see courses or tracks labelled "gifted", "GT", etc. At the high-school level, the label frequently changes to "honors" or "advanced". And you will also see Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) which are brand names for honors/advanced curriculums that often offer college credit with high marks on exams.
  - mikecsh 10y ago
    Oh that's really interesting! I went to school in the UK and they just divided it into numbered sets e.g Set 1 (top set) to Set 6 (bottom set). The US naming is an interesting affirmation of the child's difference from their peers - I've not heard of that sort of thing over here.

lettergram 10y ago

I didn't take calculus until college either and I entered college 5-6 years ago. So, the educational standards seem pretty consistent to 30 years ago. I wasn't in any way effected and graduated with a C.S. in Engineering Degree from UIUC. I also would have had a degree in mathematics, had a dual C.S. and Mathematics degree been allowed. So I would sweat over it. That being said, I would never dream of sending my kid to public school regardless. Speaking of splitting kids up, I was placed into the "trouble" kids group (probably due to dyslexia or apathy) until I was eventually identified as "gifted" 6-7 years later[1]... I seriously think I have a slight bit of PTSD dealing with the screaming in a classroom all those years. Mixing students is probably a hell of a lot worse than not. Then again S.F. is all about being "equal" to the point of insanity. [1] http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/ http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/

dpark 10y ago
I took a year of calculus in high school and took 3 semesters of calculus later in college. The first semester of college calculus covered all of the high school material and then some, and I don't think my year of high school calculus really mattered. On the subject of mixing, I think mixing students is probably better overall. The "trouble" group is the result of splitting them out. You don't end up with a whole room of problematic kids and a couple of misidentified gifted kids when they are mixed. The only way it makes sense to split out the problematic kids is if they get a lower student:teacher ratio. They need more attention.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  > I took a year of calculus in high school and took 3 semesters of calculus later in college. Probably not AP, so the college wouldn't accept it, right? That's the rub, really. Though to be honest my HS calculus was more like an intro with College being much more complex.
  - dpark 10y ago
    Yeah, my high school didn't offer AP calc. They did offer a few AP classes like English, which I took but never transferred anyway.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

stdbrouw 10y ago

It will of course depend on the exact situation of a particular classroom, but FWIW, research is very mixed on tracking (separating students according to ability) and gifted classes. See e.g. Jo Boaler's "When even the winners are losers" about how gifted students can come to hate mathematics because of all of the pressure that's being put on them in accelerated classes.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
criddell 10y ago
My kids are in public school in Texas and overall I'm very happy with their mathematics classes. They do separate kids by ability and interest and some of the kids do feel a lot of pressure. But the pressure is mostly coming from parents, not the school. They also have reversed the classes and it works wonderfully for my kids. Every night, they are assigned a video to watch (something very similar in nature to Khan Academy videos) and the next day they work through problems in class. It works well for my kids because they learn by doing and so it seems that spending classroom time on that part makes sense.

samnwa 10y ago

It's funny because if you know education's history this is a debate that has gone back and forth every other decade. Before "we" were in school when mixed abilities were separated, mixed abilities were in one class. No doubt in another few years, we will go back to believing that separating based on ability is ideal. At the end of the day, the important thing is to focus on goals / outcomes rather than magic solutions to enable learning.

brianwawok 10y ago
Isn't the result of almost all studies that mixed ability classes HELPS the under performing and HURTS the top performing? Seems fairly obvious. In a class with 5 bad, 10 average, and 5 smart kids... the teacher will focus most effort on the 5 bad kids. They will get much more attention compared to a class with 10 bad and 10 average kids... of course the losers being the 5 smart kids who get basically ignored. So tragedy of the commons says I want my, top performing, kid to be in a gifted only class to maximize his potential. But as a society I want all kids grouped, as bringing up the average knowledge of the country is a very good goal (and important when you realize things such as everyone gets 1 vote, no matter intelligence).
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  A good teacher will use the gifted students to help teach the poorer students. And teaching a subject is a great way to ensure that you have a full understanding of it.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    What % of teachers are "good"? Again, we often need to optimize for the "mediocre teacher". At least in the US we pay our teachers less than we pay our garbage truck drivers, I am not sure we can count on "most" being "good". Which is not to diss teachers, but to be sad that we don't value them enough.
    - Retric 10y ago

dietrichepp 10y ago

I remember when I was a kid in Portland, OR public schools, the district figured out a way to teach me algebra in 4th grade. The rules (or laws, I can't remember) mandated that the district make accommodations to teach students at the appropriate rate and level. The pendulum seems to swing back and forth, however. There are parents that insist that their child is gifted, enough parents to cause trouble with school boards. For one of my friends, apparently his parents requested that he not be placed in the same class as me, because I was better than him in one or two disciplines. Parents are crazy. I understand the desire to succeed, but I can't relate to people who want to be the smartest person in the room.

bluejekyll 10y ago
Are you sure it was because they wanted him to be the smartest in the room, and not that they were trying to make sure that he wasn't stressed out learning at a pace that he wasn't ready for?
- dietrichepp 10y ago
  The classes weren't separated by ability, so he would have been learning at the same pace had he been placed in my class.
wj 10y ago
I also grew up in the Portland area and had a "TAG" program for the fourth and fifth grades. Due to a state law that changed the way state funds were allocated amongst districts it was discontinued prior to the sixth grade (along with the sixth grade trip). I went from being challenged to completely bored and starting getting in a lot of trouble which was something that lasted through middle school. My oldest child is still a year away from kindergarten and from the conversations I have had with elementary school administrators it sounds like they don't really have any formal plan to handle kids that are more advanced in certain subjects. They definitely don't use the terms "talented" or "gifted" anymore. Not sure if my child would be qualified for a program like that in the future but it would be good to know that it was be available.

alistairSH 10y ago

As noted in a sibling, educators have flip-flopped on mixing achievement levels for decades or more. I was a casualty of one such experiment in Fairfax County, VA. My year, and my year only, instead of offering the usual 7th grade honors "pre-Algebra" course, they mixed the honors students with lower achieving students. It was an unmitigated disaster for those of on the honors end of the spectrum. When we entered Algebra in 8th grade, we were all well behind the expected knowledge level. I feel like it hurt me the rest of the way through high school. As far as I can tell (from loads in internet research), Algebra-For-All and similar mixed courses have benefits for the average and below-average students, but the price is stunting the development of advanced learners.

javier2 10y ago

This is how the Norwegian system works. It's shit if you learn quicker than the others, and all time is spent on the 3 most disruptive pupils.

Nadya 10y ago

>As a side note, I don't remember being taught algebra before the 9th grade either, in an excellent school district, and I was in a gifted class. I still kept my algebra textbook from the 10th grade and it's pretty standard algebra. In fact, I didn't even learn Calculus until college and I wasn't negatively impacted by that at all. However, this was almost 30 years ago so I'm sure educational standards have increased, but it's funny that what I learned back then is no longer "good enough". When I learned algebra it was taught in the 8th grade or 7th grade AP. My younger sibling (only a decade apart) was learning it in the 6th grade while not placed in an advanced class. It will vary by state and school district, I imagine. It also appears to me that Preschool is less and less "optional" and more and more "required" with many expectations for Kindergarten students to know things that would have been taught to students who attended Preschool, so students who did not attend Preschool are already behind their peers before even entering the 1st grade...