It's worse than that—if public schools don't offer the kinds of advanced courses that wealthy parents expect their kids to have, the wealthy parents don't just shrug and say oh well. They pull them out of public school and put them into private school or homeschool or get them a tutor. It doesn't matter why a public school is inadequate (whether it's because of policy like this or simple underfunding), inadequate public schools invariably increase achievement gaps between socioeconomic classes. There's no other possible outcome. There's no world where everyone gets held down equally.
Afaict, the wealthy and/or well-connected often "drive" the quality of public services - they're not going to insist on improvement if they can easily check out and pay for a private alternative.
I'm not saying to stop private alternatives, just that policies that might work other places probably don't work 1:1 in the US.
or maybe the people with education and resources decide to volunteer and fix their own community?
if all of the greedy, self-interested, disengaged people decide to leave, how is that not an improvement?
The prototypical wealthy person is a small business owner or a well paid professional/executive. It's likely that they're very busy, and the prospect of them spending Wednesday afternoons volunteering at their schools is... unlikely.
>if all of the greedy, self-interested, disengaged people decide to leave, how is that not an improvement?
It's a huge problem if they leave and take their tax dollars with them.
The article also sites that those that want to take Calc as seniors would need to double up or take summer classes. This means that if you're gifted you also need to have parents that can support summer school. When in reality kids should have summers to be kids.
I took Calc 2 junior year of High School, the class size was maybe 6 people. Graduating class was 100~.
Gifted kids with parents of means will just hire tutors or elect to do college classes sooner.
I still remember first time meeting a kid from the US due to an exchange program and while I could do integrals in my head at 15 they could barely multiply/divide in their head. While doing integrals as mental math may not be very useful in the "real world" as I was told by them back then, it sets a precedent for learning and exercising your brain so you can tackle more complex problems that come later.
I'm not saying that it's perfect here either btw, I'm very aware of the engineering/medicine rat race since I've lived that for 4 years, but I'm amazed how nerfed education in the US is for people who are much more financially in a better position than most Indians.
Still, I’m disappointed I didn’t learn integrals until the 11th grade (and there were only a few seniors and juniors in that class which was well rated for the Seattle area), I could have learned them in middle school and maybe I’d get more out of my secondary education. I didn’t even get to linear algebra until my second year of college.
Where in the framework is this? The closest I can find to this is a reference in the high school section of the framework referencing a time in the last when California schools did more to push students to accelerate courses in middle school than they do currently, and negative research about about the impact of that effort on what students ended up completing.
But nowhere in either the Middle School or High School sections which discuss the issue of acceleration is there any language encouraging delaying Algebra I/Math I to ninth grade.
This particular complaint seems to be literally people inventing something that is not in the document to be mad about.
> meaning that students would be unable to take Calculus as seniors without doubling up on math classes or taking extra classes during the summer.
That's not true; the CMF includes an trig-inclusive Algebra II which can directly be followed by Calculus; taking a Precalculus course in between would be a slow path. Algebra I-Geometry-Algebra II-Calculus or Math I-Math II-Math III-Calculus is fairly explicitly envisioned as a normal and encouraged four year sequence for students planning STEM majors in the Framework, though taking a Precalculus course after it is also envisioned as a possible sequence.
California could just as easily say "how do we get more underprivileged kids into advanced math?" and implement a multi-year effort across grades and schools. But that would be work...and against union contracts. Instead, just drop the subjects.
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Some students will be ready to accelerate into Algebra I or Mathematics I in eighth grade, and, where they are ready to do so successfully, this can support greater access to a broader range of advanced courses for them. At the same time, successful acceleration requires a strong mathematical foundation. Research indicates that in the era in which California policy encouraged all students to take Algebra in eighth grade, success for many students was undermined; widespread acceleration did not enable students to progress as expected to subsequent courses. The authors of one study found that many students had to repeat Algebra I in ninth grade and did not extend their course taking to advanced courses. The authors concluded that: “encouraging more students to take eighth-grade algebra does not by itself lead to significantly more students taking advanced mathematics in high school, nor does it lead to substantial increases in performances in higher mathematics CST.” (Liang, Heckman, and Abedi, 2012, 338). Other studies found mixed effects of this policy across districts of different kinds and for different types of students (Domina et al. 2014; Domina et al. 2015).
These challenges are no doubt a function of students’ curricular readiness—whether they have mastered the right foundations—and the quality of teaching both before and during the course itself. One racially and economically diverse New York middle school that successfully accelerated all of its students offers an example of the conditions that enabled stronger outcomes. The school ended tracking in mathematics and gave all students access to the more advanced three-year curriculum sequence that had previously been reserved to a smaller number. This sequence included in eighth grade the Mathematics I integrated course normally offered in ninth grade. Researchers followed three cohorts in the earlier tracked sequence and three cohorts in the more rigorous untracked sequence. They found that both the initially lower and higher achieving students who learned in the later heterogeneous courses took more advanced math, enjoyed math more and passed the state Regents test in New York sooner than previously. This success was supported by a carefully revised curriculum in grades six through eight, creation of alternate-day support classes, known as mathematics workshops, to assist any students needing extra help, and establishment of common planning periods for mathematics teachers so they could develop stronger pedagogies together (Burris, Heubert, and Levin, 2006).
For schools that offer an eighth grade Algebra course or a Mathematics I course as an option in lieu of Common Core Math 8, both careful plans for instruction that links to students’ prior course taking and an assessment of readiness should be considered. Such an assessment might be coupled with supplementary or summer courses that provide the kind of support for readiness that Bob Moses’ Algebra Project has provided for many years for underrepresented students tackling Algebra (Moses and Cobb, 2002).
One consideration in sequencing mathematics courses is the desire to enable students who would like to reach Calculus by the end of high school to do so. Currently, most high schools require courses in Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, and Pre-calculus before taking a course in Calculus, or a pathway of Mathematics I, II, III, then Precalculus. This sequence means that students cannot easily reach Calculus in high school unless they have taken a high school algebra course or Mathematics I in middle school.
An alternative to eighth grade acceleration would be to adjust the high school curriculum instead, eliminating redundancies in the content of current courses, so that students do not need four courses before Calculus. As enacted, Algebra II tends to repeat a significant amount of the content of Algebra I, and Precalculus repeats content from Algebra II. While recognizing that some repetition of content has value, further analysis should be conducted to evaluate how high school course pathways may be redesigned to create more streamlined pathways that allow students to take three years of middle school foundations and still reach advanced mathematics courses such as calculus. Schools may also organize supplemental course taking in summer programs, to allow students who start Algebra or Mathematics I in ninth grade to be able to take Calculus in high school if they choose. (See chapter 9 for other possible strategies high schools can adopt.)
Mandating equality by removing opportunity only obscures the metrics. This is a hack to avoid accountability--if there's no data showing inequality then surely there is no inequality.
In this case it's actually worse than that. They're not just covering up metrics, they're actively making smarter people worse off. It's like Kurt Vonnegut's fictional dystopia where the government makes equal by handicapping the people who are better.
They could prevent you from taking further maths exams at school. But not taking those exams wouldn't prevent you from using the knowledge and skills for other things, like university entrance exams.
Appendix D: Course Placement and Sequences (https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfw-appendixd.p...):
> The California Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CA CCSSM) represent a tight progression of skills and knowledge that is inherently rigorous and designed to provide a strong foundation for success in the new, more advanced Algebra I and Mathematics I courses that are typically taken by most students in grade nine.
And:
> Prior to the development of the CA CCSSM, “Algebra I” was taught in grade eight to an increasing number of students. That same course name will be the default for grade nine, as most students who move forward will complete the CA CCSSM for grade eight—and the new version of Algebra I is more rigorous and more demanding than previous versions of Algebra I.
Page 833 shows a diagram that by default gets students only to Precalculus in 12th grade, passing through Algebra I or Math I in 9th.
If CA is right that the new Algebra I is more demanding than the old then this could just be a question of semantics and definitions (though with calculus not an option by default it's still pretty clear that they're not covering as much material by default), but Conrad definitely didn't invent the idea of Algebra I being moved to ninth grade.
So some of his prior criticisms no longer apply.
Our PTA raised two orders of magnitude more money than the one four miles away in a poorer area. And the classrooms were filled with parents doing teacher gruntwork - and they also kept an eye on all the kids.
It's hard to overstate how much a good PTA (and good parents) contribute, at least at the elementary school level.