California Moves To Recommend Delaying Algebra To 9th Grade Statewide (sfstandard.com) 639
California is in the process of approving new guidelines for math education in public schools that "pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons," writes Joe Hong via the San Francisco Standard. The new approach would have been approved earlier this month but has been delayed due to the attention and controversy it has received. Here's an excerpt from the report: When Rebecca Pariso agreed to join a team of educators tasked in late 2019 with California's new mathematics framework, she said she expected some controversy. But she didn't expect her work would be in the national spotlight. [...] Every eight years (PDF), a group of educators comes together to update the state's math curriculum framework. This particular update has attracted extra attention, and controversy, because of perceived changes it makes to how "gifted" students progress -- and because it pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons. San Francisco pioneered key aspects of the new approach, opting in 2014 to delay algebra instruction until 9th grade and to push advanced mathematics courses until at least after 10th grade as a means of promoting equity.
San Francisco Unified School District touted the effort as a success, asserting that algebra failure rates fell and the number of students taking advanced math rose as a result of the change. The California Department of Education cited those results in drafting the statewide framework. But critics have accused the district of using cherry-picked and misleading assertions to bolster the case for the changes. The intent of the state mathematics framework, its designers say, is to maintain rigor while also helping remedy California's achievement gaps for Black, Latino and low-income students, which remain some of the largest in the nation. At the heart of the wrangling lies a broad agreement about at least one thing: The way California public schools teach math isn't working. On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.
Yet for all the sound and fury, the proposed framework, about 800-pages long, is little more than a set of suggestions. Its designers are revising it now and will subject it to 60 more days of public review. Once it's approved in July, districts may adopt as much or as little of the framework as they choose -- and can disregard it completely without any penalty. "It's not mandated that you use the framework," said framework team member Dianne Wilson, a program specialist at Elk Grove Unified. "There's a concern that it will be implemented unequally."
San Francisco Unified School District touted the effort as a success, asserting that algebra failure rates fell and the number of students taking advanced math rose as a result of the change. The California Department of Education cited those results in drafting the statewide framework. But critics have accused the district of using cherry-picked and misleading assertions to bolster the case for the changes. The intent of the state mathematics framework, its designers say, is to maintain rigor while also helping remedy California's achievement gaps for Black, Latino and low-income students, which remain some of the largest in the nation. At the heart of the wrangling lies a broad agreement about at least one thing: The way California public schools teach math isn't working. On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.
Yet for all the sound and fury, the proposed framework, about 800-pages long, is little more than a set of suggestions. Its designers are revising it now and will subject it to 60 more days of public review. Once it's approved in July, districts may adopt as much or as little of the framework as they choose -- and can disregard it completely without any penalty. "It's not mandated that you use the framework," said framework team member Dianne Wilson, a program specialist at Elk Grove Unified. "There's a concern that it will be implemented unequally."
Incomming message from China (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember learning Algebra in 4th grade... (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember being taught Algebra in 4th grade, and thinking it was a very dumbed down version of something similar to what I was learning at home with the BASIC programming language on my TRS-80.
Now they're pushing algebra to 9th grade and giving math lessons a "social justice" slant? Public education sucks.
Re:I remember learning Algebra in 4th grade... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...helping remedy California’s achievement gaps for Black, Latino and low-income students, which remain some of the largest in the nation. "
ie. They're simply lowering the bar. Again.
Re:China actively discards anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Without teaching kids skills to be competitive, other nations, not just China, are teaching their kids to win in the global economy. Remember the 2000s-2010s where nobody in IT could find a job because everything was offshored. That will be the US's future with this shit. Kids need to be taught math, not questioning what is in their pants.
Yes, people may not like having kids actually learn stuff, but if they want to actually have a viable job, this is a must.
Re: China actively discards anyone (Score:3)
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This is bullshit. I may be old, but I grew up in the California Bay Area and took algebra in 5th grade as per the regular curriculum. Full Algebra, not "pre-algebra". I don't remember anyone in the class having trouble with it, so if 11 year olds could do this 35-40 years ago I am sure they could do it today.
Tufts university says China is teaching algebra concepts as early as second grade. So are American children fundamentally less intelligent or capable of learning than Chinese children?
Sure "some kids" a
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Here are 5 studies that correlate race with IQ, either directly or indirectly. These are peer-reviewed academic papers, so they are all behind a paywall, however, you can read how relevant they are to the subject in the abstract.
Ethnicity and intelligence in children exposed to poverty environments: An analysis using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.in... [doi.org]
Future cognitive ability: US IQ prediction until 2060 based on NAEP http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/jour... [doi.org]
Maternal and offspring in
Re: China actively discards anyone (Score:3)
Re: China actively discards anyone (Score:3)
Are math teachers really the best choice to teach 'social justice principles'?
Every moment spent on "social justice principles" is that much less time spent, you know, learning math...
Spreadsheets should be taught (Score:4, Insightful)
In Australia most kids are taught basic Algebra even if most never actually learn how to do more than the simplest linear equations. And most do not use even the little bit they are taught.
But what they are not taught, and would use, is a knowledge of how to build a non-trivial spreadsheet model. To model their budget, their business, their social media scores, their drug deals. Whatever.
But we actually teach maths just like I Iearned it in the 1970s, with a focus on calculus for the smarter kids.
I ain't never used calculus since I left Uni, except recently to help my daughter with it (and that involved scratching the head!).
But I use spreadsheets all the time.
(I actually used Finite Field arithmetic recently, but never did pure maths at Uni.)
Re:Spreadsheets should be taught (Score:4, Insightful)
But what they are not taught, and would use, is a knowledge of how to build a non-trivial spreadsheet model. To model their budget, their business, their social media scores, their drug deals. Whatever.
At what age?
Financial maths is boring as fuck. We're talking about 13 and under here in the article. From the perspective of the kids teaching that would be another boring thing that's utterly irrelevant to the life of a 12 year old to add to the pile. The only time it gets remotely interesting is when you look at compound interest compounded over ever shorter periods, and that's because you escape financial maths and enter into a much richer world...
I actually used Finite Field arithmetic recently, but never did pure maths at Uni.
Finite fields are awesome.
Normal people: 1+1=2 is a FACT
Evariste Galois: well actually...
Honestly I think we'd be better off teaching that at school than some of the other stuff. Most of what is taught isn't "useful" to most people: you never used calculus. Most people never solve a quadratic equation let alone a simultaneous one. Etc. Finite fields in some sense reveal the core of maths: if you want to say 1+1 is not 2, you just can an no one can stop you. It's your game, you set the rules and you can play it how you choose, but weirdly the outcome is utterly out of your control. All you can do is find it.
Instead we present maths to kids as heaps and heaps of unrelated "rules" to memorize by rote and "apply" to problems.
The point of maths is the same for other art: it's fun and interesting. You might use art or music or literature in a day job, but that's not why we expose kids to it.
Re: Spreadsheets should be taught (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried getting a mortgage where I could use compounding interest in my favor.
My idea was I would pay them a fixed monthly sum of X which was larger than the value of interest. The delta would be amortization and this way, I would pay off a little more each month since interest would shrink a little every time.
As you'd expect, they didn't go for that because "the process is not supported by their software".
The system is rigged. The interest rates on savings accounts are so small as to make compound interest negligible and I cannot use it to my advantage on a loan.
I'd have to GIVE a loan to be able to profit from it.
My investment in ETFs is the only decent way to make use of compound interest.
I'm not saying it can't be done for the average person. It sure can be. However, the choices are limited.
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The TVM equation (and fundamentals) should be mandatory for everyone; it is the biggest reason people are poor. My office manager was buying a used car, and was excited that she could afford the monthly payments. She got a no-money-down 7-year loan for a car with 100,000 miles on it with 19% interest.
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And this person is in charge of an office?!? Expect your business to go belly up shortly.
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Not that anyone's gonna read this... I live in Switzerland. You fix the amortization amount. You aren't allowed to pay back more than you contractually signed up for. They use a bank account for this. You get one deduction for the interest and another for the fixed amortization. You need to have enough on that account. Whatever isn't used just accumulates there with, at the moment, no interest.
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Every one I have dealt with too. Cool thing you can do is to cut out months with your extra payment: You make the payment for month A, and include the principle amount from month A+1. Poof! Payment A+1 disappears, and now the next payment is the one originally scheduled for month A+2.
You can get an amortization schedule from your lender that details it out every month of the entire mortgage.
Re: Spreadsheets should be taught (Score:4, Insightful)
"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it."
Albert Einstein (allegedly).
"Most of the stuff I'm supposed to have written on the Internet wasn't actually by me.".
Albert Einstein (allegedly).
Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing you need is pushing down people on purpose to get more "equality".
If anything, you should be working harder to prop up the ones behind more, because you need the biggest number of smart kids you can muster, or someone else will get em and you will be trampled.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:4, Interesting)
That's actually the first thing. They follow the pre-Stakhanovite Soviet Communist model, where they found that it's much easier to bring everyone down to the level of the weakest than to lift the weakest to the level of the strongest to achieve equality of outcome.
And equity is a typical goal in declarations across education now. So equality of outcome regardless of ability and effort is starting to get mandated in reality, as speeches are now saturated with it.
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This is "equity" not "equality".
The left has be slyly slipping this subtle but meaningful change into the conversation.
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Given we're automating everything? it will just get larger and larger.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a bit, even if at the "1.99 each or two for 3.99" level, or "$4.69/gallon and I have a $50 - can I get back and forth to work for the week?" level.
And, at the same time, not nearly as many as should, or for some of the reasons they should (27% for a credit card, no worries, if I pay the minimum it should be paid off in a few months right?)
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It's hilarious that your concept of what algebra is includes things you personally could calculate, even though you don't know what algebra is.
The average adult not only doesn't remember long division, or fractions, they don't even remember enough about the order of operations to use a calculator to solve problems in their daily life. Even when presented with a table, they have a hard time finding the right number. And these are all people who passed "algebra" when they were in HS.
In my experience, even peo
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:4, Insightful)
The actual operation of division and multiplication (assuming you don't use a calculator) is arithmetic. Knowing what operations to perform on which numbers is basic algebra.
It isn't CALLED that until high school, but it is introduced by stealth much earlier. IIRC, my elementary school math books even had a lightly printed x in the box where the answer went.
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Knowing what operations to perform on which numbers is basic algebra.
Algebra is more than just "applied arithmetic". But even if we accept your semantic gymnastics of redefining 4th-grade arithmetic as "algebra", it is still true that the math actually taught in algebra class is not ever used by most people.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Insightful)
90% of the population will never, not once, need to factor a polynomial or use any other skill taught in algebra class.
Need is a bit of a loaded word there. For example, what percentage of the population will never, not once, need any skill aside from begging for money on the street and scrounging in rubbish bins and going into stores and having the clerk count out their money for them? There can be a pretty low threshold for what people need. For most of the 90% you're talking about, their lives will probably be improved by being able to perform higher math. I like to think that if more people understood things like exponential growth we might have been able to stomp Covid before it took hold rather than people listening to someone telling them that it will just go away (and trying to say that the virus has a 99.9% survival rate even after it had already killed .2% of the population). That may be a pipe dream, but most people would be more financially well off if they were better at mathematical reasoning, for example. Even if they don't need to factor polynomials, the mathematical reasoning ability that they hone by learning serves them through their lives. For example, you dismissed the gas problem as simple arithmetic. That's because you can do the problem easily. Someone with poor mathematical reasoning skills might not be able to figure out specifically which arithmetic they need to do in order to work out if they will have enough gas or not. Before they can do the arithmetic, they have to know what problem they're actually trying to solve in mathematical terms.
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Also the world is a very confusing place to people who don't understand statistics.
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Here's a type of problem I see people do incorrectly on the Internet all the time
"Gas prices have risen to $3.41, up 30% from a year ago. How much was gas a year ago?"
x * 1.3 = 3.41
x = 3.41 / 1.3
x = $2.62
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((85932*1.05)-41246)/200
about 4 hours and 5 minutes
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:2)
Anyone who earns an income, has household expenses, and needs to know how long he or she needs to work tonsave up for a new car/down payment/vacation to Niagara Falls/a night of hookers and blow needs to solve ax + b = c at the very least. Beyond that, maybe under 10% of the workforce needs to know what a parabola or an arctangent is. But you better hope your carpenter is one of them.
Polynomial factories. (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, China's got polynomial factories. They can make lots of them polynomials very cheaply. It what ever colour you like.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Interesting)
However even more people use calculus every day without realizing it. One of the core concepts of calculus is rates of change, which is something everyone who drives a car looks at frequently while driving said car. Even if you're on a bus you're going to look at speed limit signs and think about what they mean to how long it should take you to reach your destination; that's calculus right there.
Yet a huge number of people are oblivious to this fact; they fear calculus because they had a shitty math teacher decades ago in grade school and swore they would never do any "hard" math again in their lives.
If we want to move algebra further out because some kids aren't in a home structure that is conducive to them learning it in middle school, then do so. Don't leave them with years of watered down math instruction though; use that time to start teaching them calculus. Plenty of fundamental concepts of it are accessible to kids who know little or no algebra and trig.
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There was some research done years ago that found that once a teacher loses someone it's very hard to get them back on the same page, and the longer they are lost for the more they tend to think that they just aren't good at that subject and can never succeed at it.
That seems to be the idea behind these changes. Make sure everyone has a solid foundation before moving on, rather than just letting them fall further behind.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Insightful)
How 'bout we teach statistics instead?
Because statistics is based upon Calculus. Anytime you want to go farther than telling little john what a standard deviation is, you have to know Calculus to do the calculation. All the distributions are based upon the integral of their own specific type of curve.
Re:Enjoy being trampled even harder by china (Score:5, Insightful)
> The last thing you need is pushing down people on purpose to get more "equality".
You can force a low IQ student to learn the same way you can force Stephen Hawking to walk. The only way you're going to achieve equality is by pulling everyone down to the lowest common denominator. That is communism.
Not to nitpick but communism wasn't egalitarian. It was utilitarian.
If you showed aptitude in Ballet they would force you to take that on as a career. The same with math or chess or whatever. You didn't have an option.
People were told to serve the state with the best of their abilities and didn't have the freedom to choose.
Equality was used as a slogan but rarely practiced in any meaningful way.
Equality under the law has been professed in Western societies and particularly in the US Declaration of Independence where it states that: "all men are created equal".
Critical race theory is not taught in the schools (Score:4, Insightful)
It is, however, taught to the people who run the schools. And these people conclude that it is the measurment of the racial disparity that conjures it into being. Stop the measurement...and the disparity goes away* so yay antiracism.
*What they really mean is that the schools stop taking the heat for the racial disparity. Black kids on average will still suck at math, but there won't be the test scores and GPAs to point to, so the lack of black kids in higher paying engineering and tech jobs will be magically the fault of racist hiring managers instead of piss-poor public schools that fail to educate them. After all, if there's no longer any *evidence* of racial disparity in the schools, you can't blame the schools for it.
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If you had a point it was overshadowed by display of ignorance.
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You think that sucking at math has anything to do with skin color?
There is a strong correlation, but it is not linear.
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You think that sucking at math has anything to do with skin color?
There is a strong correlation, but it is not linear.
And how, pray tell, would you quantize skin color? Let us know that, and then you /begin/ to claim correlations---strong or not---with anything.
Re:Critical race theory is not taught in the schoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Black kids on average will still suck at math, but there won't be the test scores and GPAs to point to, so the lack of black kids in higher paying engineering and tech jobs will be magically the fault of racist hiring managers instead of piss-poor public schools that fail to educate them. After all, if there's no longer any *evidence* of racial disparity in the schools, you can't blame the schools for it.
All kids on average will now suck at math, but there won't be the test scores and GPAs to point to, and the lack of any kids capable of filling higher paying engineering and tech jobs will cripple progress and innovation for at least a decade while doing absolutely nothing to address class- and race-based disparities.
FTFY. And by the way, racial disparity in schools isn't an educational phenomenon. It's a societal problem; but if I were to point to one institution in particular it would be the unholy trinity of law enforcement, the (in)justice system, and the for-profit prison system that turns convictions into cash. Oh, and let's not forget a history of oppression and abuse that's still causing inter-generational, multi-generational trauma and dysfunction.
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Seriously, the parent poster is a disgusting racist. Are there really that many racists on Slashdot now that they're getting modded up?
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the scho (Score:3, Insightful)
The domain of scholarship in which critical race theory belongs is not accurately described by the word "science."
Science entails the interrogation of objective physical reality in a quantitativr manner by repeatable measurement. Opinion polls don't count. Subjective interpretation of opinion doesn't count. Moral philosophy doesn't count. And assertions taken as truth and deemed unquestionable do not count. Several of these traits and practices are found in great abundance among practitioners and proponents
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:3, Insightful)
No I shot down your line of argument completely.
No practicing physicist believes there is a luminiferous aether because the idea made a quantitative prediction, and that prediction was disproved by empricial measurement by Michaelson and Morley.
It's not a matter of personal opinion or a subjective lived experience. It's a matter of measuring and objective thing and moving on.
Debate in science "ends" when a dispositive measurement is made. A theory either makes verifiable predictions or it doesn't. And if it
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No I shot down your line of argument completely.
Why is it that you right-wing troll types are so fond of this ridiculous rhetorical farce? "I crushed your argument!", "I owned you!", "I shot down your line of argument completely!". You sound like a child playfighting with an imaginary friend. Probably once the other children won't play with him any more because they're tired of his crap. You can't just shout out your supposed triumph and have it be so.
No practicing physicist believes there is a luminiferous aether because the idea made a quantitative prediction, and that prediction was disproved by empricial measurement by Michaelson and Morley.
It's not a matter of personal opinion or a subjective lived experience. It's a matter of measuring and objective thing and moving on.
But plenty of practicing physicists believe in dark matter. They're probably right, but it's a tough one
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:4, Informative)
The "as if it does" qualifies the statement a little. Still, once again, string theory. Or any other idea that has not made verifiable predictions yet, but is still pursued. The model of science you're proposing doesn't sound like real science either. All sorts of theories that were eventually borne out have required years of work before they could get to the point of being able to make a prediction, much less verify it.
Surely you understand the distinction between "theory a predicts outcome b, but experimental result c is observed where the intersection between b and c is nil" and "...where the intersection between b and c is not negligible" and further still "...where b and c are indistinguishable to experimental uncertainty"
The subjective-experience-as-datum mentality in the cargo cult social sciences is so far off the extreme latter end as to be laughable.
Pure math at least has self consistent rules. Contradictions are not swept under rugs.
The formal and physical sciences on the one hand and social studies on the other are just radically different approaches to thought. They can coexist but one cannot be grafted onto the other through the power of positive thinking.
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely you understand the distinction between "theory a predicts outcome b, but experimental result c is observed where the intersection between b and c is nil" and "...where the intersection between b and c is not negligible" and further still "...where b and c are indistinguishable to experimental uncertainty"
Empiricism is ultimately the lifeblood of science but there's a lot of work done before and after and that's all part of science as well. Also, different branches of science have different standards for what qualifies as empiricism. For example, is astronomy, or astrophysics not science just because traditional experimentation are impossible and everything has to be done by observation rather than, for example, pushing stars together to see if you get a black hole? People get Nobel prizes for it after all (and the good, hard science ones, bot peace or economics).
Most social sciences are observational like that to a large degree. There are experiments though. Sometimes with fairly hard, objective results, but of course it's harder for them not to be subjective. Plus there's the problem of the subjects becoming aware of the results of the experiment. For example any time economics comes up with anything resembling a sound principle, it gets co-opted to make money, altering the principle. For example, these days, prices rise _because_ of the law of supply and demand, As in, if you ask people why they are raising their prices, they will say that they're doing it because of the law of supply and demand. So instead of being a tendency in markets, the existence of the "law' becomes a reason for those aware of the law to raise prices.
Another example, the existence of the field of gender studies as well as the study of it can alter perceptions of gender identity and gender relations. So the science alters the thing observed (and alters the language so that many people think that the term "gender" which just means "type" is a synonym for "sex").
That's not to say that there aren't plenty of laughable things that happen in the social sciences, but the disciplines themselves still get to be considered sciences.
Pure math at least has self consistent rules. Contradictions are not swept under rugs.
But some would argue that those self consistent rules make pure math never a science, because there can be no real experimentation, you simple follow the rules to their logical conclusion. We still consider lump computer science in with science, however. Overall there seems to also be a "sweat of the brow" rule to qualify some things as science even though they don't use real experiments.
The formal and physical sciences on the one hand and social studies on the other are just radically different approaches to thought. They can coexist but one cannot be grafted onto the other through the power of positive thinking.
There's the philosophical argument the creeps in about how chemistry and basically anything involving energy and matter are branches of physics, so biology is really a branch of physics, and psychology is really just biology and all the social sciences are just psychology (and its interaction with biology and other facets of the real world which also fall under physics) so all social sciences (and other sciences) are really physics. This would seem to work in both deterministic and non-deterministic universes (except for ones with magical forces like gods and souls). In that sense, even the social sciences would be a branch of the hard sciences. That's a digression of course, but I thought it was an interesting passing thought.
Really though, any area of study conducted scientifically is a science. While there are plenty of researchers in the social sciences who may not approach things very scientifically, and there are some pretty deep structures of meta-analysis of other meta-analyses with plenty of references to the findings of other meta-analyses and so forth, the disciplines themselves are broadly scientific.
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a legal theory based on undeniable historical facts.
To the contrary, one of the criticisms leveled at Critical Race Theory, by legal scholars no less, is that it isn’t based on fact, but rather relies heavily on personal narratives. Inasmuch as it relies on historical fact, it tends to cherry-pick the examples it uses to build its case.
Many of us here have a background in the “hard” sciences, so it should be terrifying that a phrase like “truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group” was put to paper by CRT scholars in response to some law professors criticizing CRT on the basis that it doesn’t use empirical data or testable hypothesis. Perversely, the fact that the data goes against it in many cases is, in itself, seen as proof of the racism inherent in the system that produced the data. Most of us here should recognize that as a classic, non-falsifiable belief in which the believer has predetermined what they want to believe and then seeks reasons to dismiss anything that might undermine their belief. If that’s not cause for immediate red flags, even among the “soft” scientists in the room, I’m not sure what is.
Mind you, I agree that racism is a problem in America and I agree that we have encoded it in various parts of our society, but suggesting that proves CRT to be a valid framework makes as little sense as suggesting that our mere existence is sufficient to prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real. I have no doubt that some of its proponents mean well, but CRT still has a non-falsifiable core that allows people to baselessly assert racism where none may exist. Even disagreeing with CRT on its merits as a theory is in many circles seen as prima facie evidence of racism, which is ludicrous.
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Many of us here have a background in the âoehardâ sciences,
Nah, many of the people here are engineers (I am one) and worse, computer scientists. Neither of those are science. The latter in its pure form is an esoteric branch of maths. Lots of people can quote O(N), few people ever think about the constants. And there's fuck-all empiricism in the programming world. I've got into large arguments on pull requests refusing to approve incredibly complicated "super fast" code which has zero measurements
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Sure, depending on who you ask mathematics either is, or is not, science but that is a semantic pissing contest I'm not going to get into.
It's not and it's not a semantic pissing contest. Science is fundamentally empirical and about the real world, mathematics is fundamentally about abstract rules and proof. The kind of reasoning which goes on in science is very different from the reasoning in maths.
One thing I know for sure, there would no science worth mentioning without Mathematics.
Yes. But there would a
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What you are describing is a garden variety conspiracy theory. It’s remarkable that it’s gained so much traction in academic circles.
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you maybe explain what that has to do with CRT though?
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None of that is true.
Oh? The primary source is paywalled, but you can find references to exactly what I was talking about on page 213 of this paper [researchgate.net]:
There have been several critiques of CRT for not offering testable hypotheses or measurable outcomes, while treating narrative as a form of data (e.g., Farber, & Sherry, 1997; Kennedy, 1989). These critiques have been rebutted by Crits as representing the dominant social science paradigm, which only served to marginalize People of Color (e.g., Ball, 1990; Barnes, 1990; Crenshaw, 2002; Delgado, 1990; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Espinoza, 1990). As Delgado and Stefancic (2012) argue:
CRT’s adversaries are perhaps most concerned with what they perceive to be critical race theorists’ nonchalance about objective truth. For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics. In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group. (p. 104)
As for this:
CRT actually proves itself.
That’s typically referred to as circular reasoning and is an example of the exact behavior I was describing above when I mentioned that objections to CRT on its lack of merit are assumed to be evidence of racism.
As for your assertion that I agree with CRT, it gets some things right, but so did Trump. So does a broken clock. You’re painting it in a very narrow
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:4, Insightful)
His actually was circular reasoning. Re-read what he wrote and you’ll see that it comes down to “CRT says systemic racism exists therefore objections to CRT demonstrate that systemic racism exists”. That’s circular reasoning that provides no allowance for the notion that there may be reasons for objecting to CRT on the basis of anything other than racism.
Re: Critical race theory is not taught in the sch (Score:2)
Let's try this:
"Science has proven that:"
"The civil war was fought over slavery"
"The civil war was fought over southern states' rights"
"The civil war was fought over northern industrialists' economic interests"
Doesn't quite work. Unless it's the punchline of a pre-woke SNL skit from around 2002.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The VA Superintendent recommended teachers read a book called "Critical Race Theory in Education" and more books that extensively discussed the concept. They gave a presentation that discussed their Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Principles... step 1? "Embrace Critical Race Theory". Both of these can be found right on the DOE website.
You're really going to keep denying it after that?
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You're asserting that the causal arrow exists and points in a certain direction, namely that identifying slow learners slows them down for life.
No, that's a huge leap from what I said. You seem to be begging the question here, the assumption being that formal testing is the only way to measure ability.
For motivating brighter kids, that's something teachers need to integrate into their lessons. I don't know how maths is taught in US schools but in the UK when I was a lad we would go through some concepts with the teacher and then spend most of the time working through exercises at our own pace. Those who were going faster had no shortage of stuff, a
Better idea (Score:5, Informative)
A better idea is to focus on improving math education, pushing algebra lower and lower. We know third graders can handle algebra concepts, so we should try to figure out how to make that accessible to all third graders, instead of lowering standards.
Improve education, don't lower standards.
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KhanAcademy is effective at teaching algebra.
An obvious solution is to use KA for students who learn effectively online, use the competent teachers to help struggling students, and fire the incompetent teachers.
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Arguably the solution is to teach the teachers to teach better. Most likely the problem is the teachers can't teach people to enjoy math because they don't enjoy math.
Re:Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Arguably the solution is to teach the teachers to teach better. Most likely the problem is the teachers can't teach people to enjoy math because they don't enjoy math.
Most likely, the problem is that we've been underpaying teachers so badly for so long that the people who are good enough at math to calculate their after-tax salary don't go into education anymore. Double teacher salaries across the board, and watch how quickly the quality of education improves. :-)
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An excellent point. It prompts me to wonder - are the teachers bad at what they do because they themselves never learned the subject adequately, or because they don't care to put in the effort because the pay is poor, or because their efforts are undercut by administrative politics and power games, or because their hands are tied by shitty curricula? Probably several or all of the above.
John Taylor Gatto's "Underground History of American Education" is a very worthwhile read for anyone seriously interested
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, agreed. This is the most baffling thing I ever heard of. Some kids can't succeed at Calculus, so don't offer it? What the heck? It makes no sense to lower the standards so that everyone is equally incapable of competing intellectually on the world stage. We're talking about delaying algebra until even later, while other countries are teaching it in middle school, and teaching what we would consider college-level statistics by high school. This, right here, is how the U.S. becomes the laughingstock of the free world.
This is not the way any sane person approaches equity. This is like taking the classic equality versus equity cartoon, and instead of giving the shortest box to the tallest person, they break the other taller people's legs so that they can't see over the fence any better than the shortest person. It makes absolutely no sense. Teaching algebra even later to the smartest kids means that you're wasting most of their potential. At that point, it's no longer about giving people what they need to succeed, but about handicapping the best and the brightest to such an extent that they get bored and drop out of the system entirely. And I've seen that happen to a lot of smart people over the years, so when I see people heading further down that rathole, I can only ask, "What the f*** are you thinking?"
The only way to achieve equity is by addressing the actual causes of the educational disparity between the "haves" and the "have-nots" head-on. The root cause of that disparity is that some parents are able to do more towards teaching their own kids. Some of those differences are caused by differences in parents' education levels, the number of hours that the parents spend outside the home (one job versus three), whether both parents are actively involved in raising the children, whether the kids have access to technology at a young age and can start learning how to use it, and so on.
Almost all of these problems are financial in nature at their core, and solving them in a non-financial way is challenging, if not impossible, so the best way to solve the problem, IMO, is to massively raise the minimum wage (optionally through government subsidies), thus pushing the standard of living way up for people who can barely make ends meet.
But short of doing that, the only way you can really fix these problems is by ensuring that schools make up for what the parents ideally should be teaching their kids, but don't or can't. This means exposing them to all sorts of mental stimulation as early as possible. The precursors to abstract thinking should be taught starting in first grade, a little bit more each time, so that by the time they get to the actual algebra, it's easy.
We waste an incredible amount of time on rote memorization that does absolutely no good whatsoever. If I were running a school system, multiplication tables wouldn't even be taught. You have a calculator for that. Maybe you'll pick it up a bit over time. Even in the 1980s, when teachers said, "You won't always have a calculator," I knew they were mistaken, because I already had one on my wrist. The entire approach to teaching math is fundamentally broken as a result of emphasis on rote memorization instead of comprehension, and we will never truly get everyone to love learning as long as learning is drudgery.
And science is the same way. Why aren't kids learning about science by going out in the garden and studying the leaf patterns — learning to identify plants and animals in the real world instead of sitting in a classroom reading about them? Why aren't they learning the basics of chemistry in fifth grade by mixing stuff up to see what happens? The fact that all the interesting and fun stuff doesn't even begin to get taught until 9th grade means we've basically wasted nine years of everyone's time.
History, too. Instead of talking about what year a war ended or which battle was the turning point of a given war, we should be teaching why those wars mattered. It's the "why" that mat
Re: (Score:3)
Alternative math (Score:5, Interesting)
So in other words, they're just going to teach them simple arithmetic and entirely withhold development of critical thinking skills. Yeah, that checks...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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So you don't know what critical thinking is, but you know it must be Virtuous, and since it is hard you associate it with math.
And so to prove how much of a deep thinker you are, you link to a video that does your thinking for you? Wow. These new users slashdot has been getting lately are really low quality.
Ever thought of looking up the word "nerd" to see what it means?
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Critical thinking is about being able to evaluate information critically. You're not going to be doing that with math until you're deep into you're 3rd or 4th year of college,
Unless someone teaches you to do that though math in high school. Which can easily happen in a statistics class at any level, and used to happen regularly in geometry class.
Re: You can't learn critical thinking from math (Score:3, Insightful)
the final solution (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why on earth would they raise the pass mark like that?!
what about teaching the math of the student loan? (Score:2)
what about teaching the math of the student loan?
Better teach Chinese, then (Score:4, Funny)
You'll miss their tax revenue. (Score:5, Informative)
California is doing its absolute BEST to emulate the ideals portrayed in the move "Idiocracy". I absolutely support its secession from the Union.
While I can't disagree with your first sentence after reading this summary, be careful what you wish for with the 2nd. They pay a lot more federal tax revenue than your state does....a lot more than they take in. So yeah, if you're in a red state with low taxes, like NH, for example, it's because the blues states, especially California, are picking up your slack and funding your bills for that social security, strong military, and infrastructure you like so much.
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I'm in a blue state with high taxes.
If California secedes, your taxes will be even higher.
California does a lot of stupid stuff, be we do it at our own expense. You aren't paying for it.
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They pay a lot more federal tax revenue than your state does....a lot more than they take in.
They're not worth the trouble. We'll manage to get by without them or their money.
Needed effort (Score:4, Interesting)
Educelebrities rule the day (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened to STEM? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a desperate need for STEM grads across the board in job openings.
You canâ(TM)t succeed in STEM without advanced mathematics.
Advanced Calculus is critical for work in AI/ML, chemical engineers, aerospace engineering, and other STEM fields.
This doesnâ(TM)t create equity - it just cripples those with potential.
Cripple them young and they will be crippled for life.
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Cripple them young and they will be crippled for life.
But they'll all be equal.
This is how countries are decimated (Score:5, Insightful)
California is in the process ... "pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons,"
This is how Argentina went from being one of the richest countries in the world in 1900 to a backward upper income developing country in 2021. Their education system was a huge failure. And without education, you can't have functioning democratic institutions, a market economy, or reasonable infrastructure.
Basic literacy and numeracy is such a necessity. Our prosperity is built on it.
We are giving up on talented youth. We should be nurturing their abilities, not suffocating them. The US has actually regresssed in math since 2000. We introduced "new methods" which were worse than the old ones from the 1990s.
And now they want to get rid of grades in high school based on exams too. California is moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems. Los Angeles and San Diego Unified have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines.
Has it occurred to anyone that instead of dragging down the top 50% to the bottom, that we nurture each child so they reach their potential. We could raise standards for teachers not lower them as was done recently in New York State. We fail almost all students otherwise.
We are headed to Brazilian style educational failure along with the society they have over there.
I hope the someone has the courage to fight this decay.
Re:This is how countries are decimated (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't you heard? Meritocracy is racist, a tool used by white supremacists to keep PoC down.
I wish I were just shit posting, but this is a real perspective people with too much power over our children have: https://thespectator.info/2021... [thespectator.info]
We used to expect excellence (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, rather than help people achieve it, they simply stop expecting it.
Just because someone isn't white doesn't mean they're stupid. But, if you treat them as stupid and incapable of excelling, you get what you expect. This is the true "institutional racism", and it's being pushed by people claiming to be fighting racism.
Mathematics doesn't know color. "Right" and "wrong" answers don't change by who solves for them.
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SV won't tolerate shitty math education (Score:2)
So 1 of 2 things:
1. This is poorly worded and not as abysmally shitty as it sounds...
or
2. This won't last long....5 years, tops.
The thing about education is you can prove or disp
Hein? (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't it already a freshman course? When I was in public school in California in the 90's algebra was available in the 8th grade as an honor's course. The standard course was 9th Algebra, 10th Geometry, 11th Algebra II, 12th Trigonometry, and if one started a year early, Calculus was available in the senior year.
In any event, I think algebra is more important/useful than almost any non-arithmetic field taught in school, and needs to be covered well. Calculus forms the foundation of many sciences, but generally seems to be introduced pretty poorly, with too much emphasis on rote integration and differentiation of formulae that can be looked up in tables, rather than ensuring a proper understanding of the core concepts.
No Child Left Behind (Score:5, Insightful)
The corollary to No Child Left Behind is No Child Gets Ahead. That's a horrible model. Every child needs to be challenged to the level of their ability. Maybe 50% of the kids will be fine with "average" curriculum. Say 30% have special needs and require extra support and may take longer (perhaps years longer) to master some skills. But perhaps 20% will be bored and wasting their time in the mainstream courses, so they need to be pushed with more challenging material and pushed to learn faster. (I made up the numbers, but the idea is valid.)
From the summary, the problem is that minority and low income students aren't keeping up. They're trying to keep them in the main group through changing the curriculum to where they aren't falling behind. That's going to push more kids into the gifted or "bored with the slow standard pace" group.
I have no doubt that it's a real problem, but I question whether they're using the right tool to solve it. This doesn't sound like a curriculum problem, but a support problem. What do they need to do to give these kids the ability to succeed? Maybe some just need more time to process the curriculum, but maybe they need breakfast. Or maybe they need preschool. I don't know the answer, but I think we all agree that pulling down the other kids isn't the answer.
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The corollary to No Child Left Behind is No Child Gets Ahead.
The difference is whether you focus on improving peoples skills, or reducing people's skills.
So I googled a bit (Score:5, Informative)
What it comes down to is this:
a. They have a *lot* of non English speakers in their districts, like 42% are still taking classes to learn English. Waiting until 9th grade means they're fluent enough for the teachers to actually teach. This gets called "social justice" because the people who want to help those kids learn don't have access to focus groups and haven't learned that phrase is brand poison now.
b. There're also a *lot* of poor kids, and they're nowhere near ready to take algebra. Another year or two helps a lot, if only because their brains have had 2 more years to develop. Also older kids need less attention from their parents, and poor kids aren't getting much of that as their parents are either working or ignoring them. (this last part came from other google searches I did on the topic)
c. Finally, when the kids who aren't ready inevitably fail they give up on math and education entirely. It takes very, very little to discourage a child, especially one from a borked family that gets little or no positive reinforcement at home. As much as everyone hates it, this is where "everybody gets a star" comes from.
Basically it's the difference between 2 approaches to education: The China one where the strong survive and the weak are fodder and one that is trying to achieve better overall outcomes.
The objection is going to be that we shouldn't force the rich, well loved kids to stay behind (and somebody is inevitably going to bring up that old Kurt Vonnegut Story). But that's not what's happening here. These are recommendations meant to provide a framework for districts that don't have those kind of kids (they don't last long if they are in those districts, their parents move them, fast, or at least find a magnet school).
But this will be a useful tool for creating outrage, because nuance is dead. And nobody googles. Something, something, something failed education system...
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"The China one where the strong survive and the weak are fodder and one that is trying to achieve better overall outcomes."
Well the former one is the one that built successful dominant countries.
What makes you think China is dominant? (Score:2)
I remember Pakistan basically let a bunch of terrorists attack a major building in India. Everyone expected war. But war was bad for business. Ind
Re:So I googled a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
The article states this is a statewide initiative. This applies to kids around Stanford and in Orange County, as well as to the barrios and ghettos. It helps the disadvantaged but harms the typical and more talented kids.
Society benefits from technological progress. Things like antibiotics, vaccines, smartphones and offworld exploration. Achievement then should be encouraged at every level, not suppressed, for egalitarian outcomes that please some groups.
And you are absolutely correct about the Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron." [archive.org] He wrote that in 1961. [google.com] The first paragraph is:
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal
before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter
than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was
stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing
vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
Achievement isn't being surpressed (Score:5, Insightful)
It does exactly what you want, encourage achievement. This is especially important because, thanks to machines and automation, the world doesn't need ditch diggers.
Education is complicated and nuanced. This is why we should leave it up to experts, and when those experts speak take time to read up on their reasons for doing things before we oppose them outright.
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The schools aren't teaching adequate English in grades 1 to 8, and the parents of these ill-educated students are unassimilated immigrants who don't speak English and who can't function in our country.
That's not really the issue here. If all the immigrant kids were entering the education system in kindergarten, sure that would be a solid argument. However we find that kids from all over the world are entering the US education system at all ages. We have immigrants with teenagers coming in and they are learning English on the fly while trying to learn all the rest of the subjects. A 12 year old kid who grew up speaking a non-European tongue and writing in a different alphabet has a completely differe
Enjoy (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what you voted for ... this is what you wanted. Whether you knew it or not. (Although you should have known it.)
When you get on a train, it is going to eventually get to the next station. Well, here we are.
(But hey, no more mean tweets, amiright?)
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How many times did one go into zero?
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It's turtles all the way down.
Re:That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
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Not the parents who fail to be involved in supporting childrens' education or, worse, who openly hate teachers and public education.