Thanks for the detailed thoughts. It sounds like you had a uniquely poor experience with your math education which is too bad. Obviously you are plenty smart to

Thanks for the detailed thoughts. It sounds like you had a uniquely poor experience with your math education which is too bad. Obviously you are plenty smart to handle the concepts themselves and once you had reason to apply them, you immediately "got it". I definitely don't disagree that the way the subjects are taught without context is part of the problem. I didn't really "get" calculus until I was forced to apply it to physics. That said, specifically with respect to the content in Algebra, I wasn't really sure what we were talking about here, so I looked up the CA Common Core Algebra 1 concepts. [0] > (1) deepen and extend understanding of linear and exponential relationships > (2) contrast linear and exponential relationships with each other and engage in methods for analyzing, solving, and using quadratic functions > (3) extend the laws of exponents to square and cube roots > (4) apply linear models to data that exhibit a linear trend This strikes me as a pretty reasonable terminal point for the general population, and I don't see how you are going to talk about anything but the most shallow statistical concepts without being comfortable with the machinery involved in the above. Perhaps you could use stats to make the content more relatable and teach both at the same time (over 2 years?), that would seem reasonable to me. But I think I would resist dropping the above concepts from the curriculum entirely in favor of a "stats light" course that literally only went into charts and basic descriptive stats. Also, it's a bit of a cliche, but I do think it's worthwhile to teach some concepts for the sake of imparting a lesson on "how to think" and not just for the content itself. The quadratic formula feels like a good example of this. Literally nobody has reason to apply it, but the abstract reasoning skills involved in mastering it are foundational. Even if we cannot get 100% of everyone there, it's a laudable goal to me and one we should stick with. [0] https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/ccssmathstandardaug2013.pdf https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/ccssmathstandardau...