17 ms·

SFUSD's delay of algebra 1 has created a nightmare of workarounds

96 points by hnburnsy 4y ago

hindsightbias 4y ago
The problem is that we’re not funding prisons to adequately to accept the apparently desired public school outcomes. /s
josephcsible 4y ago
Related, from just about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30952821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30952821 And from a few months before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29324551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29324551
- yonran 4y ago
  See also this article from 4 days ago on Jo Boaler who uses San Francisco as a model for the rest of California https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319345 https://twitter.com/stephaniemlee/status/1640765521946902529 https://twitter.com/stephaniemlee/status/1640765521946902529
pknomad 4y ago
It's absolutely mind-boggling that the administrators try to establish "equity" by pushing all students down, instead of them up. I suspect part of it is driven by the fact that it's cheaper and easier to meet metrics and/or look "socially engaged" by blocking students (when appropriate) from advancing. US is below the mean for average mathematical performance and this isn't helping. (https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm) On an anecdotal basis, I went to an elite university in the US (mostly based on luck I think because I was a mediocre student) and there was an implicit expectation was that students seriously pursuing STEM would be starting their curriculum with multivariable calc or linear algebra as a freshmen since the single variable calc requirement would have been knocked out AP/IB credits. I've seen many of my international cohorts going even beyond. I genuinely worry that school systems such as SFUSD is doing a great disservice to its students and the society.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > It's absolutely mind-boggling that the administrators try to establish "equity" by pushing all students down, instead of them up. It's not that surprising, though, given that they've admitted their goal is equality of outcome rather than of opportunity. That's the only way to achieve the former.
  - decremental 4y ago
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  - bdw5204 4y ago
    What is "absolutely mind-boggling" is that there are parents who voluntarily send their kids to a school that openly admits it wants to dumb kids down to the lowest common denominator yet claim they care about their kids. If you know that the school's focus isn't on providing the best education possible to your kids, pull them out of that school immediately. If it is a public school (as it is in this case), complain to the school board, vote them out of office if they don't listen and support local efforts to expand school choice to rescue as many kids as possible from that failing public school system that has proven itself incapable of performing its primary function. Even if you get the school board to reverse insane decisions like banning algebra from middle schools, I still wouldn't trust any school system that would even consider doing such things to properly educate kids. I think it beyond a reasonable doubt that the dysfunction in the SF school district is much deeper than just this algebra ban.
    - spoonjim 4y ago
      “ If you know that the school's focus isn't on providing the best education possible to your kids, pull them out of that school immediately” Hard to do when you are poor, as many in SF are. SF seems like a rich city on the outside because it has an insane number of rich people but it also has dirt poor people who can’t do anything else.
    - candiodari 4y ago
      This is one of the quickest way to get your kids into youth services even if you provide better education yourself. And IN youth services, something like half of kids don't even go to school, and aren't homeschooled, so let's just forget asking about the quality of education. The purpose of the state here is to sabotage your kids to their own benefit (in this case: make the education system easier to administrate, to underpay teachers, and above all else protect the power and jobs the system has). They will actively fight, to the point of using violence against you and your kids, if you reject the school system. Be very careful with doing this. And if you do, you're probably better off pretending you're a fundamentalist christian, or better yet, muslim or hindu or ... objecting to sex ed classes. Seriously. This is with parents and kids rejecting the school system being big exceptions. If ever 10% of kids become homeschooled, it will get a lot worse. You'd think this wouldn't happen. Statistics are very clear, for example, that a LOT more kids are abused at school than at home. This is 100% the fault of the school system (failure to prevent personnel from plus failure to supervise kids, and please do not: school do traumatize kids, as everyone kind of knows and research confirms. It's just not something talked about), and has an obvious result: actions by youth services to make kids go to school increases child abuse, rather than decrease it. Likewise, it reduces schooling. You would think this strange if you assume their purpose is to protect kids, rather than their real purpose: to protect schools and the state from kids. If they actually intended to protect kids, obviously, they'd refuse to interfere in these cases. And for the love of God, DO NOT ask help from youth services under any circumstances, but above all, don't ask them to help with your kid being traumatized or bullied at school. They will 100% blame the kid, refuse do take any action whatsoever in school, and most definitely will not make teachers pay attention and prevent bullying in the playground or anything like that.
yetanotherloss 4y ago
Wow. We did algebra in .. 5th grade? Seems like standardized testing and goals is killing things about as predicted.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  As a kid from eastern europe, my first algebra lessons were in 1st grade. I was always baffled by algebra being introduced in grade 5 or 6 here in the US; grade 8 would be ridiculous. Kids my age in my hometown would be taking early calculus at that grade level.
  - carabiner 4y ago
    We had algebra in kindergarten. By 6th grade we were doing calculus of variations.
    - randyrand 4y ago
      Same here. Started algebra II just before kindergarten and finished linear algebra by next summer.
- ltbarcly3 4y ago
  At my daughters school they had algebra in 6th and 7th grade, and it was only about an hour south of San Francisco. San Francisco is outlier bad in education in the US, and it is surrounded by a dozen communities with outlier-good schools. It is a double outlier. https://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/ https://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/
  - jeron 4y ago
    South Bay public schools are leagues better than SFUSD, less politics and a lot more competitive
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  SF is actually contorting itself (ie, blatantly lying) to avoid showing the standardized test results which show how badly this policy has performed.
userbinator 4y ago
Then those who are willing and motivated to self-learn will get even further ahead... which causes exactly the opposite of the "equity" they're trying to create.
deleted 4y ago
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somethoughts 4y ago
At this point - perhaps just to be the glass half full guy - its best to see math in the public school system as the equivalent to PE (physical education). The kids (and parents) who really want to excel in STEM will just be doing after school competitive math anyway and probably are already so just like they don't provide competitive soccer/football/baseball/fencing/piano coaching (which also could be used to get into elite schools); the school district maybe doesn't need to provide anything beyond the equivalent to getting some fresh air. Perhaps even the lack of rigor, might increase the market size/volume for rigorous after-school offerings.
opisthenar84 4y ago
I wonder how much of this is a byproduct of school administrators themselves not understanding algebra.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  Hey, if they could become successful school administrators without algebra, why would anyone need to learn algebra?
armchairhacker 4y ago
Public school is no longer enough, and I don’t see it improving in the short term. I think the only practical solution is widely-known resources and alternative curricula for low-income families so that they too can get a decent education. Hopefully people are working on these, because otherwise these smart low-income kids are wasting their potential. And when kids apply to college they need a usable metric to be compared, which their “official” high-school transcripts are not, so otherwise admission is just upper-income or lottery. An upside to over-lenient grading, at least students can half-ass “school” while they take these alternative classes that are actually teaching them.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > I think the only practical solution is widely-known resources and alternative curricula for low-income families so that they too can get a decent education. And the middle class end up fucked. Too rich to get extra help. Too poor to afford private. Like walking in the middle of the road... splat.
  - armchairhacker 4y ago
    I should've said "free resources". Limited programs and stipends wouldn't even benefit all low-income anyways: some parents are really hard-to-reach, and some parents don't apply for things and the kid has to take the initiative themselves.
- qwerpy 4y ago
  Hilarious/sad conversation I had with my wife about this. Me: You seem to not care at all about public schools dumbing down the curriculum. It could happen here too. Wife: Why should I? This doesn’t affect us. We’ve already decided our kids are going to private school. Me: Sure. Just sucks for smart but poor kids. Wife: Good for us. Weaker competition for our kids.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Makes sense until you realize that your kids will be taxed and paying to support the kids they out competed.
givemeethekeys 4y ago
If you go to public school in SF, you are probably poor. Well, the powers that be have decided that you’re too poor to be taught algebra so early. Probably because they don’t expect you to go to university. We need tradespeople and you have been selected for the role.
- icelancer 4y ago
  This would be a far better intention than what the school board is actually intending.
- hedora 4y ago
  If we can’t prepare all the kids for every trade, equity says we must not teach any kids any trade.
l33tc0de 4y ago
What do they call themselves in cali these days? Progressives I guess, good job.
ThorsBane 4y ago
This is evil. It's like that administration in that one sci-fi dystopia that tried to force everyone to be equal by making everyone wear masks and making the stronger wear weighted clothing and the smarter wear thought-jamming devices. Increase standards, but also streamline processes. Leverage ChatGPT so students learn by repetition in innovative games with cool interfaces, virtual and 3d and sound/motion interfaces, with lots of gym time. No more identity bullshit besides what is basic to become a good person like it was common to be taught throughout the world like 10 years ago. You know what, fuck this. Pause everything. REWIND. HARD FUCKING FORK on this reality. This is bullshit, I'm rewinding the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0
- bitwize 4y ago
  The story you are referring to is Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut.
  - ThorsBane 4y ago
    My friend, the only thing I can say to that is: Fuck that shit. We're going back to 2011, I have unfinished business back there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg Everyone back to 2011 hardcore startup mindset with all the tech conferences w/ free food and great shows and demos, but this time code is still king, none of this talking only bullshit same at every level of compensation in any kind of org. time to earn your keep or be replaced by chatgpt since that'll be the tyranny you fall under if you wanna front tyranny yourself like in Harrison Bergeron like my friend and I are familiar with, you see.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Leverage ChatGPT so students learn by repetition in innovative games with cool interfaces You mean shitty, derivative games that haven't been tested at all? There's no good reason to use ChatGPT in education like that, and doing so is pure technology fetishism.
  - 4y ago
Jerry2 4y ago
Related story: "American IQ Test Scores Show Recent Declines, According To New Study" [1] >American IQ test scores have dropped during a recent 13-year period, a remarkable finding that runs counter to the well-established trend of increasing IQ scores throughout much of the 20th century. >The study found evidence of a reverse “Flynn effect” in a large U.S. sample of almost 400,000 individuals tested between 2006 and 2018 in several ability areas. The Flynn effect refers to the well-replicated finding that IQ scores increased consistently through much of the 20th century, with increases ranging from three to five IQ points per decade. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/american-iq-test-scores-show-recent-declines-according-to-new-study/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/amer...
Flatcircle 4y ago
https://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Steven-Pinker-audiobook/dp/B002ZJ1V8E/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PE4R957MJJG4&keywords=blank+slate+book&qid=1680232446&sprefix=blank+slate+book%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Steven-Pinker-audiobo...
dwg 4y ago
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- tablespoon 4y ago
  Why did you post that? It's basically spam. It took no effort, and it's worthless. No one should trust anything coming out of ChatGPT, and they should trust random text purported to be from ChatGPT even less.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Ironically, we have others here in the comments recommending ChatGPT for education.
  - th16row 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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photochemsyn 4y ago
Good overview here. The TLDR is that some parents are giving their kids an edge by paying for private classes in Algebra I and/or Geometry in eight grade (this hasn't been banned, it seems) which means they're in better position to finish high school with an AP Calculus class, which tends to greatly improve their chances of getting into a UC/Cal State school: https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/12/san-francisco-math/ https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/12/san-... Incidentally, this system has also created a big need for remedial high-school-level math courses at community colleges and even at the four-year universities, where students essentially have to relearn all the material again at an acceptable standard to continue in science/engineering upper education, which is just a huge waste of resources. I'm pretty sure that more math, taught earlier, in smaller-sized classes, by better teachers, is always going to be better for long-term outcomes. This 'equity' business seems like a race-to-the-bottom which is bad for everyone.
delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
What? 8th grade and students won't take calculus? In Singapore, the default stream sees students taking basic algebra at age 11 (5th grade), simultaneous and quadratic equations at age 14 (8th grade), and single-variable calculus at age 16 (10th grade). By 17-18 (11-12th grades), students have done first-order ordinary differential equations, volumes of revolution, functions, vectors, and students have the option to take college-level linear algebra or discrete mathematics. What is wrong with the US?
- qwerpy 4y ago
  We don’t have a homogenous population of Asians, that’s why. I was an Asian in American public school and was 2 years behind what you described, and that was going as fast as possible within the system.
  - delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
    I don't think being 'Asian' has anything to do with it (for the record, 'Asia' is a continent stretching from Yemen to Japan). In this very thread there are people talking about professors of German and Eastern European origin complaining about the standards of their students.
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  Nothing? I took all those classes around the same age in a public school in the midwestern United States. I didn't turn 16 until my 11th year of school so maybe there's just a difference in the way grades are numbered. (I was a little young for my grade.)
- jimt1234 4y ago
  My friend moved from Taiwan to the US in 7th grade, and she felt the same way. She was totally bored, but enjoyed suddenly becoming the smartest kid in her math class. She was, at best, an average student in Taiwan.
- Spivak 4y ago
  The US is the same it’s just spread out and named differently. “Basic Algebra” is what we call 7th-8th grade (age 11-13) math. “Simultaneous and quadratic equations” is what we call Algebra which is 9th grade (age 14-15) with logs and exponentials thrown in. Most places do a split year of Geometry and Trig in 10th grade. Single variable calculus and first order blah blah is Calc 1 for 11th graders. Volumes, vectors, integrals, infinite series, taylor expansions is Calc 2 for 12th graders.
darth_avocado 4y ago
I am afraid there is an evil lurking just around the corner: mass private tuitions. I grew up in another country where public and private education kept falling in standards and eventually there was a gap between what was expected in college and standardized tests, was no longer being taught in schools. Solution: Private tutors to fill the gap. The kids who couldn’t afford it, kept falling behind. It got so bad that at some point school teachers would teach completely different subjects to their own students, but in private tuitions outside the school. Seems that is the way forward if nothing changes.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  This reminds me of bloom’s 2 sigma problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem
miley_cyrus 4y ago
In America, we have a war on merit.
clnq 4y ago
I feel conflicted about this. I started learning algebra around grade 6 in Europe, so I think pushing it back to grade 9 is a bit far. But on the other hand, I was always amazed by how much skipping just a week or two of school a year could impact one’s education. It’s very difficult to catch up (in Central European schools at least). A bout of pneumonia could negatively impact your whole life if you miss a week of school and you don’t have the time or teaching to catch up. Education can be very rushed, maybe it shouldn’t be. Pupils should be given time to catch up when various life events happen to them. And if this means a more spaced out curriculum, so be it.
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  Does summer vacation exist in Central Europe? In high school (USA) I was tracked into a two year remedial math course following an abysmal performance in pre-calc, so after 1 year of that I spent the summer taking an online course and tested back onto the normal track. The Summer break is often derided as a time when students forget everything, but without it I likely would not have ended up studying mathematics in college.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Yes it exists. (~2 months) It may be the time to forget things, but it's also a time to develop skills not enforced by schools and expand your social environment. There's a balance in everything.
  - clnq 4y ago
    Things are very different in Europe and in the US. And even in different countries in Europe, I suspect. Summer vacations exist but opportunities for catching up during them might be limited in public schools. Many don't have remediation learning tracks for students who have fallen behind. Where I was growing up in the 90s, some teachers would stay after work in their classrooms mostly out of the goodness of their hearts and help pupils who fell behind. Not all teachers would do this and sometimes your school wouldn't have a teacher helping kids in a certain discipline, so you would go to your friends' schools if they had that. Sometimes money was involved, which created conflicts of interest. Commercial tutoring schools popped up in the region later that formalized and democratized the process a little bit. The internet was there in the late 90s already, but obviously things like Khan Academy arrived much later. I appreciate that kids these days have more resources and it's not an "every kid for themselves" as it was in my childhood. But I still think it would be best if the tempo at schools was reduced so there's time to catch up. Spaced out learning is more effective in terms of retention anyways. It just takes more time.
ar9av 4y ago
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Gatsky 4y ago
As far as I know, there is no proven way to improve equality in a school system. Even in Norway, which has the highest GDP per capita in the world, the students from poor/less educated families still underperform [1]: >Norway is a wealthy and egalitarian country with a homogeneous educational system, yet achievement gaps between students at the 90th and 10th percentiles of parental income and between students whose parents have at least a master and at most a high school degree are found to be large (0.55–0.93 and 0.70–0.99 SD), equivalent to about 2 to 2.5 years of schooling, and increasing by grade level. Achievement gaps by parental income, but not by parental education, increased over the time period, underscoring the different ways these two socioeconomic status components relate to achievement and the potential for policy to alter gaps. Part of the answer could be that genetics play a larger role than anyone would like. Plomin for example claims that from twin studies a large part of educational attainment is heritable. I suspect the current school system will burn itself down before admitting that, however. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X221142596 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X221142...
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > Part of the answer could be that genetics play a larger role than anyone would like. In studies like the Norway study you cite this could be controlled for by adoptions. Though adoptees, of course, come with their own non-genetic baggage. I would hope that, at the very least, IQ testing would be performed to try to match based on that.
- scythe 4y ago
  >As far as I know, there is no proven way to improve equality in a school system. What the remainder of your post argues is that there is no way to achieve complete equality in a school system. But we need to be clear about what that means. Most people believe that success should be rewarded somehow. It's relatively uncommon even among socialists to argue that there should be no inequality of overall consumption opportunity. Most parents want to help their children succeed. It should naturally follow that the parents who have more resources will have more successful children. It would require a massive and likely endless society-scale project to counteract the combined parenting efforts of the whole professional class in order to achieve the questionable goal of literally equal opportunity, genetics notwithstanding. Even the Soviet Union had the nomenklatura. The real goal should be to understand the process of education and remove all actual structural barriers while providing support to the disadvantaged in ways that are reasonably understood to be effective. Obsessing over romantic ideals that seem attractive from 10000 feet is not the way.
legitster 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
markus_zhang 4y ago
Well minister you asked for equality so we gave them equal marks! One is not a mind reader! I miss you Sir Humphrey.
lofatdairy 4y ago
Really doesn't do anything except fuck over smart kids whose unlucky parents can't afford private school. I don't think that's equity by any definition.
HWR_14 4y ago
I honestly assumed this was about SF forcing all students to have taken algebra in 7th grade. What are they wasting their time doing in middle school?
pyuser583 4y ago
One major issue is that SF doesn’t have many kids. So “school issues” easily end up being implementations of ideologies, rather than of services provided. People aren’t asking “are my kids learning” because they don’t have kids. And neither do their friends and coworkers.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  Good point. Some more info: >Persons under 18 years, San Francisco County, California percent 14.0[0] Meanwhile US total is %22[1] This[2] article claims SF has the least amount of kids in the US, although it does not share an exact source. [0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocountycalifornia https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocou... [1]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US [2]https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fewest-kids-maps-17193677.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fewest-kids-maps-1719...
- hadlock 4y ago
  SF School district has 55,000 kids in public schools. It is the 6th largest school district in the state of California. They sit behind Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno etc. In addition to 55k kids in public schools, they have another 22,000 kids in private schools. SF has a low number of kids per household, but it's still an enormous school district.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Yeah, but how many of those 55K public school kids are from affluent families? California schools didn’t go from top ten to the 43’rd in the US by gutting the wealthy districts.
    - hadlock 4y ago
      The prompt was speculating that there aren't enough parents in the SF school district to enact change, my response is not addressing California schools in relation to other states.
deleted 4y ago
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dfrankle 4y ago
Well, there go their chances of solving the "X" factor in the Golden Gate Bridge equation.
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nradov 4y ago
This is why parents move out of San Francisco when they have children. There are more dogs than kids in the city. The city government is actively hostile to children.
tjpnz 4y ago
What effect will this have on the economy longterm? Most software jobs for instance don't require much beyond simple arithmetic, but you need people with a mathematical bent to do the groundbreaking stuff. If this kind of BS is allowed to fester in the education system where do you find those people 10-20 years from now? You can't do it all with foreign workers, especially with engineer salaries becoming increasingly competitive outside of the US.
WalterBright 4y ago
Looks like Seattle is ahead of the curve, here, as they already banned all gifted programs.
pyuser583 4y ago
I’m really put off by both sides. If my daughters school didn’t offer algebra in eight grade, she just wouldn’t take algebra. I wouldn’t spent thousands of dollars so she can be a year ahead. It seems you have a bunch of parents who view their children’s education as a carefully calibrated laboratory process, and bunch of activists who care more about groups than individuals.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  This is a message board mostly full of people who can send their children to private school for a trivial portion of their savings. If I had "hella cash" and was already sending my child to prison every day and the prison decided to waste their time for years because algebra is racist, it seems like I would be a bit heartless not to lift a finger to correct the issue.
abigail95 4y ago
I did algebra in 6th grade when I was 11 as IB curriculum (MYP 1). WTF is the point of waiting until 9th grade? That's disgusting.
- dboreham 4y ago
  One thing to note is that in the US education system they name classes/courses with the names of fields in mathematics. This is quite confusing and annoying. So "Algebra" actually means "The course we called Algebra 1" (there's an Algebra 2 that comes later, also not really about Algebra). The course called Algebra 1 is basically the material the education system has decided to teach at 9th grade. That material comprises various topics, only some of which are Algebraic. Students are typically (at least in my experience) exposed to "Algebra" (symbols, equations) much earlier. Memory is fading but for my kids something like 5th grade. I still have some of their scrawled equations on a white board in my office from back in those days... Edit: they continue this confusion (at least consistently confusing) by calling the 10th grade class "Geometry" even though it's only somewhat about Geometry, and students will have met triangles and obtuse angles and whatnot years earlier. And so on through to "Pre-Calculus" which...you can guess is not much about Calculus, but the stuff they think should be taught before teaching Calculus (very scary).
  - abigail95 4y ago
    Thank you for the info. I actually really like features of the USA system, especially AP classes. The flexibility of AP is great. International baccalaureate actually places a limit on how many advanced subjects you can do and is completely inflexible to anyone trying to do more work or graduate early.
- hadlock 4y ago
  We had "pre-algebra" in 6th grade (optional) which was more or less foundational algebra, otherwise you took, whatever was the next step. Then in 7th grade you could take "algebra" and 8th was "algebra 2" if you wanted. Graduation from 8th grade required passing "algebra". Then in 9th or 10th grade you took "high school algebra" which was a big step up from 7th grade Algebra. From there you either took geometry + trig, or geometry + algebra 2 + precalc, or had the option to do all four years geometry + algebra 2 + precalc + calc. Most of these had honors and AP variations that were opt-in.
bitwize 4y ago
I was such a mathcel growing up I took high school algebra in sixth grade. So I have every right to be assmad about things like this. And past me maybe would have been. But I'm not, and the reasons why are complex. First of all, algebra is hard. And not every kid can learn it in the eighth grade. Furthermore, not every teacher qualified to teach eighth grade stuff is qualified to teach algebra. What the studies have shown is that teaching algebra to everyone in grade 8 leads to worse math outcomes. And if you agree to teach some of the kids algebra in eighth grade, you're back in the sticky wicket of tracking and "gifted kids". Show me a gifted classroom and I'll show you a classroom full of mainly rich whites and Asians -- who are depriving the poorer and more socially disadvantaged students of valuable resources. The whole point of public education is democratic access -- to all -- of sufficient educational resources and service for basic functioning as an adult citizen, NOT educating every child to the maximum of their potential. It's kind of like how capitalism is really good if and only if you want to get as rich as possible and have the means to do so, and under social democracy you will be less rich, but the tradeoff is there are far fewer economic losers. In light of this, leaving algebra until ninth grade was the best choice for the San Francisco school system for equitable availability of education to all, given the resources and framework they have to work with.
- toast0 4y ago
  > What the studies have shown is that teaching algebra to everyone in grade 8 leads to worse math outcomes. > And if you agree to teach some of the kids algebra in eighth grade, you're back in the sticky wicket of tracking and "gifted kids". Show me a gifted classroom and I'll show you a classroom full of mainly rich whites and Asians -- who are depriving the poorer and more socially disadvantaged students of valuable resources. If you're worried about resources, put the best teachers in with the "typical" kids, and give them smaller classes than the "gifted" kids. I took 8th grade algebra in 7th grade at my public school, and my kid is going to get that next year too; if we had to wait for 9th grade, it would be an amazing waste of resources, because we'd be so bored and tempted to cause trouble. I don't know that my parents would have been able to put me in private school to get the math I needed (they were able to convince the school system to let me into to algebra a year early), but I have the means to do it for my kid, but this school system is setup to meet kids where they are. I suspect this change is just another thing driving parents with means out of SFUSD, which only further reduces the resources they have.
jcn 4y ago
Having no previous knowledge about this situation in SF, I found this article from last year was an interesting read: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/san-franciscos-detracking-experiment https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/san-francis... "With both gaps, SFUSD evidenced greater inequities than state averages in 2015, and that relative underperformance worsened by 2019. The district’s anti-tracking public relations campaign, by focusing on metrics such as grades and course enrollments, diverts attention from the harsh reality that SFUSD is headed in the wrong direction on equity."
alexchantavy 4y ago
About 20 years ago, my public middle school tried to teach this new-fangled thing called “connected math“ that was conceptual and without notation or symbols, so I didn’t start learning real algebra until 9th grade when I went to private school. I was a year or more behind the rest of my peers (and in fact, my school had to open up a special section for me and one other person (!) to teach us algebra) and I constantly felt embarrassed. In college I went on to do well at linear alg and learned enough to hand wave my way through abstract alg so I ended up enjoying myself, but I’ve always felt resentful about being so far behind my peers and feeling like I needed to work harder than them. To this day I feel like I’m still playing catch up. Hearing about kids being set back in math makes me very personally angry because I always felt that my college CS studies would have been so much easier had I been equipped with the proper math fundamentals. This shit takes a long time to train and you really can do powerful things with it.
analog31 4y ago
Playing the contrarian, I'm ambivalent about 8th grade algebra. I tend to consider "school math" to be a distinct branch of math unto itself. Nobody knows why we teach it, except that it's a sorting hat for certain college majors. The purpose of each class is to prepare you for the next class. Most of the people I know who have STEM degrees don't use their college math. The math that they need is programmed into their CAD terminals. The ones who still use math in their jobs, somehow got interested in math, in spite of school math. Turning math into a competition sucked the soul out of it. Both of my kids got 8th grade math, and top ACT/SAT scores. My daughter skipped pre-calculus with no ill effect. Both are interested in math, but have no interest in taking more math classes. I breezed through school math, through college and grad school. Whoop-de-doo. Two things made math come alive for me: Proofs, and computers. But proofs are nearly gone from the school math curriculum, and the schools still haven't embraced computers. I'd actually like to see a refactoring of school math, loosely into 4 disciplines, that are introduced in a cycle, perhaps even starting in 1st grade: 1. Arithmetic -- manual symbol manipulation, up to and including calculus. 2. Computation -- use of computers to explore and solve math problems. 3. Working with data -- self explanatory. 4. Theory -- things like sets, proofs, etc. I believe this would actually be more representative of how people actually use math in their lives. Many people will use computation and data, even if they struggle through arithmetic and develop no interest in theory. On the other hand, full exposure to all of the disciplines would adequately prepare someone for academic math study. I don't believe in banning anything. Some kids need to be allowed to get "ahead" so they don't get bored and lose interest, or simply because solving those school math problems can be a fun escape -- as it was for me -- from an otherwise stressful adolescence.
- everforward 4y ago
  I like the approach, but I wouldn't say it's "more representative of how people actually use math in their lives". I work in STEM and don't think I've every needed the "Theory" category. Any kind of computation beyond a calculator is beyond what most people use, and involves half a Computer Science degree. Working with data is nice and probably somewhat useful to white collar people, but most of them are going to use a half dozen Excel commands to get there. Most people don't really have a use for learning R or anything like that. Arithmetic is basically the only thing most people are going to use, and even calculus is beyond what most people actually use. Single variable algebra is about the extent of what's useful to the vast majority of people. I'm doubtful any extension of math classes is going to go well. People forget the things they don't use, and the swaths of adults that only remember simple arithmetic and basic algebra are telling a story that the rest isn't useful.
jasongrout 4y ago
That's an interesting contrast to the Proof School (https://www.proofschool.org/ https://www.proofschool.org/), a private school also in San Francisco, which is the best 6-12th grade math environment for kids who love math that I've ever seen.
- No1 4y ago
  Middle school tuition: $43,790 per year That’s more than what I paid for university.
newmanah223 4y ago
Education is general has gotten dumbed down with time. I dropped out of college almost 20 years ago and am almost finished with my degree after returning. The difference between then and now is staggering. The mentality is if you can't make people smarter just lower the standards. The reality is perhaps the top 15% of the US population by IQ should be receiving a college education. The rest is just credentialism and a waste of societal resources.
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
This is absolutely ludicrous, unethical, and borderline criminal. I took algebra I in the summer between 6th and 7th grade. That allowed me to take geometry in 7th grade, algebra II trig in 8th grade, pre-calc in 9th grade, AP calculus in 10th grade and then IB high math in 11th and 12th grade. I credit my public, magnet school with giving me a huge leg up in life. All of my peers were middle class, yet a focus on lifting us up, accelerating our education, and challenging us helped me become the successful person I am today. In contrast, my life almost took a severely different and worse path in elementary school when I was sent to the principal's office often in kindergarten and second grade for distracting the class and causing disturbances. Thankfully my first grade teacher realized the root cause -- I had already learned the material quickly and was bored and thus distracting others. So she gave me more advanced novels and books to keep me stimulated and learning. If instead I would have had a teacher force me to slow down to the rest of the class, I likely would have ended up suspended and a delinquent. This holding everyone to the slowest standard in the name of equity is actually very inequitable. It forces children with ADHD like myself to end up as failures instead of recognizing neurodiversity and helping each child succeed in the manner best for him or her.
- jjav 4y ago
  > This holding everyone to the slowest standard in the name of equity is actually very inequitable. Math in particular is a subject where there can be such a wide divergence in age where each kid is ready to absorb topics. Having a rigid schedule where topic X is taught in grade N is always going to hurt those who are capable of moving forward faster and hurt those who need more time/maturity to get there (but may well be excellent at algebra/calculus/etc if allowed to take it when ready, not sooner). I like the schools where kids are allowed to progress through math at their pace, faster or slower, instead of being grouped by class level. Unfortunately that basically means private schools with such an approach, I haven't found any public school in the area (California) that support this.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Mountain View Los Altos High School District takes the opposite approach of Palo Alto Unified School District. There is no test to get into a particular math class. You can sign up for whatever class you want in whatever grade you want. Similarly, the elementary schools provide differentiated learning. Which private schools do this in California? I know Khan Lab School does, but watching presentations from its students didn't give me much confidence in its approach.
fmajid 4y ago
San Francisco is a parody of itself but this is not specific to it. There is a concerted effort in California to dumb down math standards under spurious claims of advancing “equity”. Needless to say, the only people who benefit are the kids of parents rich enough to send them to private school, who will now face less competition from bright but poor Asian kids who were served by institutions like Lowell High School. https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is-worse-than-we-thought/ https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is...
rahimnathwani 4y ago
A lot of this is the result of efforts by Stanford faculty and (Stanford-owned) Youcubed. If you are a Stanford alum or a parent in San Francisco, please reach out to Stanford leadership to let them know about your concern. You can send an email similar the one below, to any/all of these folks: daniel.schwartz@stanford.edu (Dean of the Graduate School of Education https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/danls https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/danls) provost@stanford.edu (Persis Drell) president@stanford.edu (Marc Tessier-Lavigne) tfenner@stanford.edu (Deputy General Counsel) Subject: Concerns Regarding Stanford's Involvement in CMF and YouCubed Dear [Recipient's Name], My name is [Your Name], and I am a concerned parent of a school-age child living in San Francisco. I am writing to express my deep concern about Stanford's connection to the California Mathematics Framework (CMF) and YouCubed. As a prestigious institution, Stanford's involvement in the promotion of these policies and practices has a significant impact on the quality of education our children receive. I am hoping to hear from you regarding the university's stance on this matter and the actions being taken to address the concerns of parents and faculty alike. Recently, I came across a list of Stanford faculty who have signed a statement expressing their concerns about the CMF (https://sites.google.com/view/mathindatamatters/home https://sites.google.com/view/mathindatamatters/home). The signatories come from a diverse range of STEM fields, including the medical school, business school, and political science. This demonstrates a clear disagreement among the university's own quantitative faculty about the direction of math education proposed by YouCubed and the CMF. As a concerned parent, I would like to know who at Stanford bears responsibility and liability for the educational effects of what YouCubed is advocating for math education. Given that YouCubed is owned by Stanford and not by an individual faculty member, I believe that the university should be held accountable for the potential negative consequences of these policies on our children's education. I would like to draw an analogy with the case of Dr. Scott Atlas, a former Stanford faculty member whose controversial views on COVID-19 led to public outcry and concern. Just as the university had to address and clarify its stance on Dr. Atlas's views, I believe it is essential for Stanford to publicly address the concerns raised by its own faculty regarding the CMF and YouCubed. I kindly request a detailed response on this matter, as it is of utmost importance to the future of our children's education. As a leading institution in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, Stanford has a responsibility to ensure that the educational policies it supports and promotes are in the best interests of our students. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response. Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Contact Information]
xorvoid 4y ago
The short-sightedness is Remarkable. Unless the entire world and every classroom hold to such a standard, than this simply widens an already uncomfortably wide Multi-Modal Distribution. We live in a global economy and compete in one. Artificially holding your community back just takes away opportunities from them and gives them to another group. Do you think the affluent families of the world are gonna stop teaching their kids math from a young age? Equity at any cost is a remarkably dumb idea. And it has an obvious trivial solution. All people live in abject poverty, despair, disease.. equally. Only a sociopath would consider that a viable solution. This reminds me of “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them”

96 points by hnburnsy 4y ago

The problem is that we’re not funding prisons to adequately to accept the apparently desired public school outcomes. /s

Related, from just about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30952821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30952821 And from a few months before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29324551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29324551

yonran 4y ago
See also this article from 4 days ago on Jo Boaler who uses San Francisco as a model for the rest of California https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319345 https://twitter.com/stephaniemlee/status/1640765521946902529 https://twitter.com/stephaniemlee/status/1640765521946902529

pknomad 4y ago

It's absolutely mind-boggling that the administrators try to establish "equity" by pushing all students down, instead of them up. I suspect part of it is driven by the fact that it's cheaper and easier to meet metrics and/or look "socially engaged" by blocking students (when appropriate) from advancing. US is below the mean for average mathematical performance and this isn't helping. (https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm) On an anecdotal basis, I went to an elite university in the US (mostly based on luck I think because I was a mediocre student) and there was an implicit expectation was that students seriously pursuing STEM would be starting their curriculum with multivariable calc or linear algebra as a freshmen since the single variable calc requirement would have been knocked out AP/IB credits. I've seen many of my international cohorts going even beyond. I genuinely worry that school systems such as SFUSD is doing a great disservice to its students and the society.

josephcsible 4y ago
> It's absolutely mind-boggling that the administrators try to establish "equity" by pushing all students down, instead of them up. It's not that surprising, though, given that they've admitted their goal is equality of outcome rather than of opportunity. That's the only way to achieve the former.
- decremental 4y ago
  [flagged]
- bdw5204 4y ago
  What is "absolutely mind-boggling" is that there are parents who voluntarily send their kids to a school that openly admits it wants to dumb kids down to the lowest common denominator yet claim they care about their kids. If you know that the school's focus isn't on providing the best education possible to your kids, pull them out of that school immediately. If it is a public school (as it is in this case), complain to the school board, vote them out of office if they don't listen and support local efforts to expand school choice to rescue as many kids as possible from that failing public school system that has proven itself incapable of performing its primary function. Even if you get the school board to reverse insane decisions like banning algebra from middle schools, I still wouldn't trust any school system that would even consider doing such things to properly educate kids. I think it beyond a reasonable doubt that the dysfunction in the SF school district is much deeper than just this algebra ban.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    “ If you know that the school's focus isn't on providing the best education possible to your kids, pull them out of that school immediately” Hard to do when you are poor, as many in SF are. SF seems like a rich city on the outside because it has an insane number of rich people but it also has dirt poor people who can’t do anything else.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    This is one of the quickest way to get your kids into youth services even if you provide better education yourself. And IN youth services, something like half of kids don't even go to school, and aren't homeschooled, so let's just forget asking about the quality of education. The purpose of the state here is to sabotage your kids to their own benefit (in this case: make the education system easier to administrate, to underpay teachers, and above all else protect the power and jobs the system has). They will actively fight, to the point of using violence against you and your kids, if you reject the school system. Be very careful with doing this. And if you do, you're probably better off pretending you're a fundamentalist christian, or better yet, muslim or hindu or ... objecting to sex ed classes. Seriously. This is with parents and kids rejecting the school system being big exceptions. If ever 10% of kids become homeschooled, it will get a lot worse. You'd think this wouldn't happen. Statistics are very clear, for example, that a LOT more kids are abused at school than at home. This is 100% the fault of the school system (failure to prevent personnel from plus failure to supervise kids, and please do not: school do traumatize kids, as everyone kind of knows and research confirms. It's just not something talked about), and has an obvious result: actions by youth services to make kids go to school increases child abuse, rather than decrease it. Likewise, it reduces schooling. You would think this strange if you assume their purpose is to protect kids, rather than their real purpose: to protect schools and the state from kids. If they actually intended to protect kids, obviously, they'd refuse to interfere in these cases. And for the love of God, DO NOT ask help from youth services under any circumstances, but above all, don't ask them to help with your kid being traumatized or bullied at school. They will 100% blame the kid, refuse do take any action whatsoever in school, and most definitely will not make teachers pay attention and prevent bullying in the playground or anything like that.

yetanotherloss 4y ago

Wow. We did algebra in .. 5th grade? Seems like standardized testing and goals is killing things about as predicted.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
As a kid from eastern europe, my first algebra lessons were in 1st grade. I was always baffled by algebra being introduced in grade 5 or 6 here in the US; grade 8 would be ridiculous. Kids my age in my hometown would be taking early calculus at that grade level.
- carabiner 4y ago
  We had algebra in kindergarten. By 6th grade we were doing calculus of variations.
  - randyrand 4y ago
    Same here. Started algebra II just before kindergarten and finished linear algebra by next summer.
ltbarcly3 4y ago
At my daughters school they had algebra in 6th and 7th grade, and it was only about an hour south of San Francisco. San Francisco is outlier bad in education in the US, and it is surrounded by a dozen communities with outlier-good schools. It is a double outlier. https://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/ https://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/
- jeron 4y ago
  South Bay public schools are leagues better than SFUSD, less politics and a lot more competitive
bpodgursky 4y ago
SF is actually contorting itself (ie, blatantly lying) to avoid showing the standardized test results which show how badly this policy has performed.

userbinator 4y ago

Then those who are willing and motivated to self-learn will get even further ahead... which causes exactly the opposite of the "equity" they're trying to create.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

somethoughts 4y ago

At this point - perhaps just to be the glass half full guy - its best to see math in the public school system as the equivalent to PE (physical education). The kids (and parents) who really want to excel in STEM will just be doing after school competitive math anyway and probably are already so just like they don't provide competitive soccer/football/baseball/fencing/piano coaching (which also could be used to get into elite schools); the school district maybe doesn't need to provide anything beyond the equivalent to getting some fresh air. Perhaps even the lack of rigor, might increase the market size/volume for rigorous after-school offerings.

opisthenar84 4y ago

I wonder how much of this is a byproduct of school administrators themselves not understanding algebra.

umeshunni 4y ago
Hey, if they could become successful school administrators without algebra, why would anyone need to learn algebra?

armchairhacker 4y ago

Public school is no longer enough, and I don’t see it improving in the short term. I think the only practical solution is widely-known resources and alternative curricula for low-income families so that they too can get a decent education. Hopefully people are working on these, because otherwise these smart low-income kids are wasting their potential. And when kids apply to college they need a usable metric to be compared, which their “official” high-school transcripts are not, so otherwise admission is just upper-income or lottery. An upside to over-lenient grading, at least students can half-ass “school” while they take these alternative classes that are actually teaching them.

bcrosby95 4y ago
> I think the only practical solution is widely-known resources and alternative curricula for low-income families so that they too can get a decent education. And the middle class end up fucked. Too rich to get extra help. Too poor to afford private. Like walking in the middle of the road... splat.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  I should've said "free resources". Limited programs and stipends wouldn't even benefit all low-income anyways: some parents are really hard-to-reach, and some parents don't apply for things and the kid has to take the initiative themselves.
qwerpy 4y ago
Hilarious/sad conversation I had with my wife about this. Me: You seem to not care at all about public schools dumbing down the curriculum. It could happen here too. Wife: Why should I? This doesn’t affect us. We’ve already decided our kids are going to private school. Me: Sure. Just sucks for smart but poor kids. Wife: Good for us. Weaker competition for our kids.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Makes sense until you realize that your kids will be taxed and paying to support the kids they out competed.

givemeethekeys 4y ago

If you go to public school in SF, you are probably poor. Well, the powers that be have decided that you’re too poor to be taught algebra so early. Probably because they don’t expect you to go to university. We need tradespeople and you have been selected for the role.

icelancer 4y ago
This would be a far better intention than what the school board is actually intending.
hedora 4y ago
If we can’t prepare all the kids for every trade, equity says we must not teach any kids any trade.

l33tc0de 4y ago

What do they call themselves in cali these days? Progressives I guess, good job.

ThorsBane 4y ago

This is evil. It's like that administration in that one sci-fi dystopia that tried to force everyone to be equal by making everyone wear masks and making the stronger wear weighted clothing and the smarter wear thought-jamming devices. Increase standards, but also streamline processes. Leverage ChatGPT so students learn by repetition in innovative games with cool interfaces, virtual and 3d and sound/motion interfaces, with lots of gym time. No more identity bullshit besides what is basic to become a good person like it was common to be taught throughout the world like 10 years ago. You know what, fuck this. Pause everything. REWIND. HARD FUCKING FORK on this reality. This is bullshit, I'm rewinding the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0

bitwize 4y ago
The story you are referring to is Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut.
- ThorsBane 4y ago
  My friend, the only thing I can say to that is: Fuck that shit. We're going back to 2011, I have unfinished business back there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg Everyone back to 2011 hardcore startup mindset with all the tech conferences w/ free food and great shows and demos, but this time code is still king, none of this talking only bullshit same at every level of compensation in any kind of org. time to earn your keep or be replaced by chatgpt since that'll be the tyranny you fall under if you wanna front tyranny yourself like in Harrison Bergeron like my friend and I are familiar with, you see.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Leverage ChatGPT so students learn by repetition in innovative games with cool interfaces You mean shitty, derivative games that haven't been tested at all? There's no good reason to use ChatGPT in education like that, and doing so is pure technology fetishism.
- 4y ago

Jerry2 4y ago

Related story: "American IQ Test Scores Show Recent Declines, According To New Study" [1] >American IQ test scores have dropped during a recent 13-year period, a remarkable finding that runs counter to the well-established trend of increasing IQ scores throughout much of the 20th century. >The study found evidence of a reverse “Flynn effect” in a large U.S. sample of almost 400,000 individuals tested between 2006 and 2018 in several ability areas. The Flynn effect refers to the well-replicated finding that IQ scores increased consistently through much of the 20th century, with increases ranging from three to five IQ points per decade. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/american-iq-test-scores-show-recent-declines-according-to-new-study/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/amer...

Flatcircle 4y ago

https://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Steven-Pinker-audiobook/dp/B002ZJ1V8E/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PE4R957MJJG4&keywords=blank+slate+book&qid=1680232446&sprefix=blank+slate+book%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Steven-Pinker-audiobo...

dwg 4y ago

[flagged]

tablespoon 4y ago
Why did you post that? It's basically spam. It took no effort, and it's worthless. No one should trust anything coming out of ChatGPT, and they should trust random text purported to be from ChatGPT even less.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Ironically, we have others here in the comments recommending ChatGPT for education.
- th16row 4y ago
  [flagged]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

photochemsyn 4y ago

Good overview here. The TLDR is that some parents are giving their kids an edge by paying for private classes in Algebra I and/or Geometry in eight grade (this hasn't been banned, it seems) which means they're in better position to finish high school with an AP Calculus class, which tends to greatly improve their chances of getting into a UC/Cal State school: https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/12/san-francisco-math/ https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/12/san-... Incidentally, this system has also created a big need for remedial high-school-level math courses at community colleges and even at the four-year universities, where students essentially have to relearn all the material again at an acceptable standard to continue in science/engineering upper education, which is just a huge waste of resources. I'm pretty sure that more math, taught earlier, in smaller-sized classes, by better teachers, is always going to be better for long-term outcomes. This 'equity' business seems like a race-to-the-bottom which is bad for everyone.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago

What? 8th grade and students won't take calculus? In Singapore, the default stream sees students taking basic algebra at age 11 (5th grade), simultaneous and quadratic equations at age 14 (8th grade), and single-variable calculus at age 16 (10th grade). By 17-18 (11-12th grades), students have done first-order ordinary differential equations, volumes of revolution, functions, vectors, and students have the option to take college-level linear algebra or discrete mathematics. What is wrong with the US?

qwerpy 4y ago
We don’t have a homogenous population of Asians, that’s why. I was an Asian in American public school and was 2 years behind what you described, and that was going as fast as possible within the system.
- delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
  I don't think being 'Asian' has anything to do with it (for the record, 'Asia' is a continent stretching from Yemen to Japan). In this very thread there are people talking about professors of German and Eastern European origin complaining about the standards of their students.
RandallBrown 4y ago
Nothing? I took all those classes around the same age in a public school in the midwestern United States. I didn't turn 16 until my 11th year of school so maybe there's just a difference in the way grades are numbered. (I was a little young for my grade.)
jimt1234 4y ago
My friend moved from Taiwan to the US in 7th grade, and she felt the same way. She was totally bored, but enjoyed suddenly becoming the smartest kid in her math class. She was, at best, an average student in Taiwan.
Spivak 4y ago
The US is the same it’s just spread out and named differently. “Basic Algebra” is what we call 7th-8th grade (age 11-13) math. “Simultaneous and quadratic equations” is what we call Algebra which is 9th grade (age 14-15) with logs and exponentials thrown in. Most places do a split year of Geometry and Trig in 10th grade. Single variable calculus and first order blah blah is Calc 1 for 11th graders. Volumes, vectors, integrals, infinite series, taylor expansions is Calc 2 for 12th graders.

darth_avocado 4y ago

I am afraid there is an evil lurking just around the corner: mass private tuitions. I grew up in another country where public and private education kept falling in standards and eventually there was a gap between what was expected in college and standardized tests, was no longer being taught in schools. Solution: Private tutors to fill the gap. The kids who couldn’t afford it, kept falling behind. It got so bad that at some point school teachers would teach completely different subjects to their own students, but in private tuitions outside the school. Seems that is the way forward if nothing changes.

celeritascelery 4y ago
This reminds me of bloom’s 2 sigma problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem

miley_cyrus 4y ago

In America, we have a war on merit.

clnq 4y ago

I feel conflicted about this. I started learning algebra around grade 6 in Europe, so I think pushing it back to grade 9 is a bit far. But on the other hand, I was always amazed by how much skipping just a week or two of school a year could impact one’s education. It’s very difficult to catch up (in Central European schools at least). A bout of pneumonia could negatively impact your whole life if you miss a week of school and you don’t have the time or teaching to catch up. Education can be very rushed, maybe it shouldn’t be. Pupils should be given time to catch up when various life events happen to them. And if this means a more spaced out curriculum, so be it.

humanizersequel 4y ago
Does summer vacation exist in Central Europe? In high school (USA) I was tracked into a two year remedial math course following an abysmal performance in pre-calc, so after 1 year of that I spent the summer taking an online course and tested back onto the normal track. The Summer break is often derided as a time when students forget everything, but without it I likely would not have ended up studying mathematics in college.
- viraptor 4y ago
  Yes it exists. (~2 months) It may be the time to forget things, but it's also a time to develop skills not enforced by schools and expand your social environment. There's a balance in everything.
- clnq 4y ago
  Things are very different in Europe and in the US. And even in different countries in Europe, I suspect. Summer vacations exist but opportunities for catching up during them might be limited in public schools. Many don't have remediation learning tracks for students who have fallen behind. Where I was growing up in the 90s, some teachers would stay after work in their classrooms mostly out of the goodness of their hearts and help pupils who fell behind. Not all teachers would do this and sometimes your school wouldn't have a teacher helping kids in a certain discipline, so you would go to your friends' schools if they had that. Sometimes money was involved, which created conflicts of interest. Commercial tutoring schools popped up in the region later that formalized and democratized the process a little bit. The internet was there in the late 90s already, but obviously things like Khan Academy arrived much later. I appreciate that kids these days have more resources and it's not an "every kid for themselves" as it was in my childhood. But I still think it would be best if the tempo at schools was reduced so there's time to catch up. Spaced out learning is more effective in terms of retention anyways. It just takes more time.

ar9av 4y ago

[dead]

Gatsky 4y ago

As far as I know, there is no proven way to improve equality in a school system. Even in Norway, which has the highest GDP per capita in the world, the students from poor/less educated families still underperform [1]: >Norway is a wealthy and egalitarian country with a homogeneous educational system, yet achievement gaps between students at the 90th and 10th percentiles of parental income and between students whose parents have at least a master and at most a high school degree are found to be large (0.55–0.93 and 0.70–0.99 SD), equivalent to about 2 to 2.5 years of schooling, and increasing by grade level. Achievement gaps by parental income, but not by parental education, increased over the time period, underscoring the different ways these two socioeconomic status components relate to achievement and the potential for policy to alter gaps. Part of the answer could be that genetics play a larger role than anyone would like. Plomin for example claims that from twin studies a large part of educational attainment is heritable. I suspect the current school system will burn itself down before admitting that, however. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X221142596 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X221142...

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> Part of the answer could be that genetics play a larger role than anyone would like. In studies like the Norway study you cite this could be controlled for by adoptions. Though adoptees, of course, come with their own non-genetic baggage. I would hope that, at the very least, IQ testing would be performed to try to match based on that.
scythe 4y ago
>As far as I know, there is no proven way to improve equality in a school system. What the remainder of your post argues is that there is no way to achieve complete equality in a school system. But we need to be clear about what that means. Most people believe that success should be rewarded somehow. It's relatively uncommon even among socialists to argue that there should be no inequality of overall consumption opportunity. Most parents want to help their children succeed. It should naturally follow that the parents who have more resources will have more successful children. It would require a massive and likely endless society-scale project to counteract the combined parenting efforts of the whole professional class in order to achieve the questionable goal of literally equal opportunity, genetics notwithstanding. Even the Soviet Union had the nomenklatura. The real goal should be to understand the process of education and remove all actual structural barriers while providing support to the disadvantaged in ways that are reasonably understood to be effective. Obsessing over romantic ideals that seem attractive from 10000 feet is not the way.

legitster 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

markus_zhang 4y ago

Well minister you asked for equality so we gave them equal marks! One is not a mind reader! I miss you Sir Humphrey.

lofatdairy 4y ago

Really doesn't do anything except fuck over smart kids whose unlucky parents can't afford private school. I don't think that's equity by any definition.

HWR_14 4y ago

I honestly assumed this was about SF forcing all students to have taken algebra in 7th grade. What are they wasting their time doing in middle school?

pyuser583 4y ago

One major issue is that SF doesn’t have many kids. So “school issues” easily end up being implementations of ideologies, rather than of services provided. People aren’t asking “are my kids learning” because they don’t have kids. And neither do their friends and coworkers.

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
Good point. Some more info: >Persons under 18 years, San Francisco County, California percent 14.0[0] Meanwhile US total is %22[1] This[2] article claims SF has the least amount of kids in the US, although it does not share an exact source. [0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocountycalifornia https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocou... [1]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US [2]https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fewest-kids-maps-17193677.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fewest-kids-maps-1719...
hadlock 4y ago
SF School district has 55,000 kids in public schools. It is the 6th largest school district in the state of California. They sit behind Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno etc. In addition to 55k kids in public schools, they have another 22,000 kids in private schools. SF has a low number of kids per household, but it's still an enormous school district.
- hedora 4y ago
  Yeah, but how many of those 55K public school kids are from affluent families? California schools didn’t go from top ten to the 43’rd in the US by gutting the wealthy districts.
  - hadlock 4y ago
    The prompt was speculating that there aren't enough parents in the SF school district to enact change, my response is not addressing California schools in relation to other states.

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dfrankle 4y ago

Well, there go their chances of solving the "X" factor in the Golden Gate Bridge equation.

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nradov 4y ago

This is why parents move out of San Francisco when they have children. There are more dogs than kids in the city. The city government is actively hostile to children.

tjpnz 4y ago

What effect will this have on the economy longterm? Most software jobs for instance don't require much beyond simple arithmetic, but you need people with a mathematical bent to do the groundbreaking stuff. If this kind of BS is allowed to fester in the education system where do you find those people 10-20 years from now? You can't do it all with foreign workers, especially with engineer salaries becoming increasingly competitive outside of the US.

WalterBright 4y ago

Looks like Seattle is ahead of the curve, here, as they already banned all gifted programs.

pyuser583 4y ago

I’m really put off by both sides. If my daughters school didn’t offer algebra in eight grade, she just wouldn’t take algebra. I wouldn’t spent thousands of dollars so she can be a year ahead. It seems you have a bunch of parents who view their children’s education as a carefully calibrated laboratory process, and bunch of activists who care more about groups than individuals.

anonymoushn 4y ago
This is a message board mostly full of people who can send their children to private school for a trivial portion of their savings. If I had "hella cash" and was already sending my child to prison every day and the prison decided to waste their time for years because algebra is racist, it seems like I would be a bit heartless not to lift a finger to correct the issue.

abigail95 4y ago

I did algebra in 6th grade when I was 11 as IB curriculum (MYP 1). WTF is the point of waiting until 9th grade? That's disgusting.

dboreham 4y ago
One thing to note is that in the US education system they name classes/courses with the names of fields in mathematics. This is quite confusing and annoying. So "Algebra" actually means "The course we called Algebra 1" (there's an Algebra 2 that comes later, also not really about Algebra). The course called Algebra 1 is basically the material the education system has decided to teach at 9th grade. That material comprises various topics, only some of which are Algebraic. Students are typically (at least in my experience) exposed to "Algebra" (symbols, equations) much earlier. Memory is fading but for my kids something like 5th grade. I still have some of their scrawled equations on a white board in my office from back in those days... Edit: they continue this confusion (at least consistently confusing) by calling the 10th grade class "Geometry" even though it's only somewhat about Geometry, and students will have met triangles and obtuse angles and whatnot years earlier. And so on through to "Pre-Calculus" which...you can guess is not much about Calculus, but the stuff they think should be taught before teaching Calculus (very scary).
- abigail95 4y ago
  Thank you for the info. I actually really like features of the USA system, especially AP classes. The flexibility of AP is great. International baccalaureate actually places a limit on how many advanced subjects you can do and is completely inflexible to anyone trying to do more work or graduate early.
hadlock 4y ago
We had "pre-algebra" in 6th grade (optional) which was more or less foundational algebra, otherwise you took, whatever was the next step. Then in 7th grade you could take "algebra" and 8th was "algebra 2" if you wanted. Graduation from 8th grade required passing "algebra". Then in 9th or 10th grade you took "high school algebra" which was a big step up from 7th grade Algebra. From there you either took geometry + trig, or geometry + algebra 2 + precalc, or had the option to do all four years geometry + algebra 2 + precalc + calc. Most of these had honors and AP variations that were opt-in.

bitwize 4y ago

I was such a mathcel growing up I took high school algebra in sixth grade. So I have every right to be assmad about things like this. And past me maybe would have been. But I'm not, and the reasons why are complex. First of all, algebra is hard. And not every kid can learn it in the eighth grade. Furthermore, not every teacher qualified to teach eighth grade stuff is qualified to teach algebra. What the studies have shown is that teaching algebra to everyone in grade 8 leads to worse math outcomes. And if you agree to teach some of the kids algebra in eighth grade, you're back in the sticky wicket of tracking and "gifted kids". Show me a gifted classroom and I'll show you a classroom full of mainly rich whites and Asians -- who are depriving the poorer and more socially disadvantaged students of valuable resources. The whole point of public education is democratic access -- to all -- of sufficient educational resources and service for basic functioning as an adult citizen, NOT educating every child to the maximum of their potential. It's kind of like how capitalism is really good if and only if you want to get as rich as possible and have the means to do so, and under social democracy you will be less rich, but the tradeoff is there are far fewer economic losers. In light of this, leaving algebra until ninth grade was the best choice for the San Francisco school system for equitable availability of education to all, given the resources and framework they have to work with.

toast0 4y ago
> What the studies have shown is that teaching algebra to everyone in grade 8 leads to worse math outcomes. > And if you agree to teach some of the kids algebra in eighth grade, you're back in the sticky wicket of tracking and "gifted kids". Show me a gifted classroom and I'll show you a classroom full of mainly rich whites and Asians -- who are depriving the poorer and more socially disadvantaged students of valuable resources. If you're worried about resources, put the best teachers in with the "typical" kids, and give them smaller classes than the "gifted" kids. I took 8th grade algebra in 7th grade at my public school, and my kid is going to get that next year too; if we had to wait for 9th grade, it would be an amazing waste of resources, because we'd be so bored and tempted to cause trouble. I don't know that my parents would have been able to put me in private school to get the math I needed (they were able to convince the school system to let me into to algebra a year early), but I have the means to do it for my kid, but this school system is setup to meet kids where they are. I suspect this change is just another thing driving parents with means out of SFUSD, which only further reduces the resources they have.

jcn 4y ago

Having no previous knowledge about this situation in SF, I found this article from last year was an interesting read: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/san-franciscos-detracking-experiment https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/san-francis... "With both gaps, SFUSD evidenced greater inequities than state averages in 2015, and that relative underperformance worsened by 2019. The district’s anti-tracking public relations campaign, by focusing on metrics such as grades and course enrollments, diverts attention from the harsh reality that SFUSD is headed in the wrong direction on equity."

alexchantavy 4y ago

About 20 years ago, my public middle school tried to teach this new-fangled thing called “connected math“ that was conceptual and without notation or symbols, so I didn’t start learning real algebra until 9th grade when I went to private school. I was a year or more behind the rest of my peers (and in fact, my school had to open up a special section for me and one other person (!) to teach us algebra) and I constantly felt embarrassed. In college I went on to do well at linear alg and learned enough to hand wave my way through abstract alg so I ended up enjoying myself, but I’ve always felt resentful about being so far behind my peers and feeling like I needed to work harder than them. To this day I feel like I’m still playing catch up. Hearing about kids being set back in math makes me very personally angry because I always felt that my college CS studies would have been so much easier had I been equipped with the proper math fundamentals. This shit takes a long time to train and you really can do powerful things with it.

analog31 4y ago

Playing the contrarian, I'm ambivalent about 8th grade algebra. I tend to consider "school math" to be a distinct branch of math unto itself. Nobody knows why we teach it, except that it's a sorting hat for certain college majors. The purpose of each class is to prepare you for the next class. Most of the people I know who have STEM degrees don't use their college math. The math that they need is programmed into their CAD terminals. The ones who still use math in their jobs, somehow got interested in math, in spite of school math. Turning math into a competition sucked the soul out of it. Both of my kids got 8th grade math, and top ACT/SAT scores. My daughter skipped pre-calculus with no ill effect. Both are interested in math, but have no interest in taking more math classes. I breezed through school math, through college and grad school. Whoop-de-doo. Two things made math come alive for me: Proofs, and computers. But proofs are nearly gone from the school math curriculum, and the schools still haven't embraced computers. I'd actually like to see a refactoring of school math, loosely into 4 disciplines, that are introduced in a cycle, perhaps even starting in 1st grade: 1. Arithmetic -- manual symbol manipulation, up to and including calculus. 2. Computation -- use of computers to explore and solve math problems. 3. Working with data -- self explanatory. 4. Theory -- things like sets, proofs, etc. I believe this would actually be more representative of how people actually use math in their lives. Many people will use computation and data, even if they struggle through arithmetic and develop no interest in theory. On the other hand, full exposure to all of the disciplines would adequately prepare someone for academic math study. I don't believe in banning anything. Some kids need to be allowed to get "ahead" so they don't get bored and lose interest, or simply because solving those school math problems can be a fun escape -- as it was for me -- from an otherwise stressful adolescence.

everforward 4y ago
I like the approach, but I wouldn't say it's "more representative of how people actually use math in their lives". I work in STEM and don't think I've every needed the "Theory" category. Any kind of computation beyond a calculator is beyond what most people use, and involves half a Computer Science degree. Working with data is nice and probably somewhat useful to white collar people, but most of them are going to use a half dozen Excel commands to get there. Most people don't really have a use for learning R or anything like that. Arithmetic is basically the only thing most people are going to use, and even calculus is beyond what most people actually use. Single variable algebra is about the extent of what's useful to the vast majority of people. I'm doubtful any extension of math classes is going to go well. People forget the things they don't use, and the swaths of adults that only remember simple arithmetic and basic algebra are telling a story that the rest isn't useful.

jasongrout 4y ago

That's an interesting contrast to the Proof School (https://www.proofschool.org/ https://www.proofschool.org/), a private school also in San Francisco, which is the best 6-12th grade math environment for kids who love math that I've ever seen.

No1 4y ago
Middle school tuition: $43,790 per year That’s more than what I paid for university.

newmanah223 4y ago

Education is general has gotten dumbed down with time. I dropped out of college almost 20 years ago and am almost finished with my degree after returning. The difference between then and now is staggering. The mentality is if you can't make people smarter just lower the standards. The reality is perhaps the top 15% of the US population by IQ should be receiving a college education. The rest is just credentialism and a waste of societal resources.

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago

This is absolutely ludicrous, unethical, and borderline criminal. I took algebra I in the summer between 6th and 7th grade. That allowed me to take geometry in 7th grade, algebra II trig in 8th grade, pre-calc in 9th grade, AP calculus in 10th grade and then IB high math in 11th and 12th grade. I credit my public, magnet school with giving me a huge leg up in life. All of my peers were middle class, yet a focus on lifting us up, accelerating our education, and challenging us helped me become the successful person I am today. In contrast, my life almost took a severely different and worse path in elementary school when I was sent to the principal's office often in kindergarten and second grade for distracting the class and causing disturbances. Thankfully my first grade teacher realized the root cause -- I had already learned the material quickly and was bored and thus distracting others. So she gave me more advanced novels and books to keep me stimulated and learning. If instead I would have had a teacher force me to slow down to the rest of the class, I likely would have ended up suspended and a delinquent. This holding everyone to the slowest standard in the name of equity is actually very inequitable. It forces children with ADHD like myself to end up as failures instead of recognizing neurodiversity and helping each child succeed in the manner best for him or her.

jjav 4y ago
> This holding everyone to the slowest standard in the name of equity is actually very inequitable. Math in particular is a subject where there can be such a wide divergence in age where each kid is ready to absorb topics. Having a rigid schedule where topic X is taught in grade N is always going to hurt those who are capable of moving forward faster and hurt those who need more time/maturity to get there (but may well be excellent at algebra/calculus/etc if allowed to take it when ready, not sooner). I like the schools where kids are allowed to progress through math at their pace, faster or slower, instead of being grouped by class level. Unfortunately that basically means private schools with such an approach, I haven't found any public school in the area (California) that support this.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Mountain View Los Altos High School District takes the opposite approach of Palo Alto Unified School District. There is no test to get into a particular math class. You can sign up for whatever class you want in whatever grade you want. Similarly, the elementary schools provide differentiated learning. Which private schools do this in California? I know Khan Lab School does, but watching presentations from its students didn't give me much confidence in its approach.

fmajid 4y ago

San Francisco is a parody of itself but this is not specific to it. There is a concerted effort in California to dumb down math standards under spurious claims of advancing “equity”. Needless to say, the only people who benefit are the kids of parents rich enough to send them to private school, who will now face less competition from bright but poor Asian kids who were served by institutions like Lowell High School. https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is-worse-than-we-thought/ https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is...

rahimnathwani 4y ago

A lot of this is the result of efforts by Stanford faculty and (Stanford-owned) Youcubed. If you are a Stanford alum or a parent in San Francisco, please reach out to Stanford leadership to let them know about your concern. You can send an email similar the one below, to any/all of these folks: daniel.schwartz@stanford.edu (Dean of the Graduate School of Education https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/danls https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/danls) provost@stanford.edu (Persis Drell) president@stanford.edu (Marc Tessier-Lavigne) tfenner@stanford.edu (Deputy General Counsel) Subject: Concerns Regarding Stanford's Involvement in CMF and YouCubed Dear [Recipient's Name], My name is [Your Name], and I am a concerned parent of a school-age child living in San Francisco. I am writing to express my deep concern about Stanford's connection to the California Mathematics Framework (CMF) and YouCubed. As a prestigious institution, Stanford's involvement in the promotion of these policies and practices has a significant impact on the quality of education our children receive. I am hoping to hear from you regarding the university's stance on this matter and the actions being taken to address the concerns of parents and faculty alike. Recently, I came across a list of Stanford faculty who have signed a statement expressing their concerns about the CMF (https://sites.google.com/view/mathindatamatters/home https://sites.google.com/view/mathindatamatters/home). The signatories come from a diverse range of STEM fields, including the medical school, business school, and political science. This demonstrates a clear disagreement among the university's own quantitative faculty about the direction of math education proposed by YouCubed and the CMF. As a concerned parent, I would like to know who at Stanford bears responsibility and liability for the educational effects of what YouCubed is advocating for math education. Given that YouCubed is owned by Stanford and not by an individual faculty member, I believe that the university should be held accountable for the potential negative consequences of these policies on our children's education. I would like to draw an analogy with the case of Dr. Scott Atlas, a former Stanford faculty member whose controversial views on COVID-19 led to public outcry and concern. Just as the university had to address and clarify its stance on Dr. Atlas's views, I believe it is essential for Stanford to publicly address the concerns raised by its own faculty regarding the CMF and YouCubed. I kindly request a detailed response on this matter, as it is of utmost importance to the future of our children's education. As a leading institution in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, Stanford has a responsibility to ensure that the educational policies it supports and promotes are in the best interests of our students. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response. Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Contact Information]

xorvoid 4y ago

The short-sightedness is Remarkable. Unless the entire world and every classroom hold to such a standard, than this simply widens an already uncomfortably wide Multi-Modal Distribution. We live in a global economy and compete in one. Artificially holding your community back just takes away opportunities from them and gives them to another group. Do you think the affluent families of the world are gonna stop teaching their kids math from a young age? Equity at any cost is a remarkably dumb idea. And it has an obvious trivial solution. All people live in abject poverty, despair, disease.. equally. Only a sociopath would consider that a viable solution. This reminds me of “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them”