I’m not commenting on the news coverage. I’m merely observing that you’re accusing others of poisoning a well that you’d already thoroughly poisoned.
For fuck’s sake, no, that’s not what I’m saying. If you’ll go back and reread what I wrote, including the part about “local official misunderstands,” I think you’ll be embarrassed at your misrepresentation. But if you’re genuinely confused, I can try to explain it with short declarative sentences.
No. We’re afraid that the OP is misrepresenting a situation based on how a Rupert Murdoch property is misrepresenting the situation, whether it’s hamburger bans or government-funded Kamala picture books or Dr. Seuss bans or Virginia math classes. There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that’s very, very good at this sort of lying, and it has duped millions of people. I don’t intend to be one of them. When I see something like the OP, I’m extremely skeptical that the full story is showing up.
And yet nothing in the archived site says that the DOE is going to break Virginia law by preventing kids from accelerating through math courses. Turns out your “evidence” actually refutes the OP’s nonsense.
Are there any news sources in America that aren’t hopelessly partisan? I’ve sometimes resorted to searching for local news sites to try and get the full story, but don’t know if they are any better really.
Considering we were talking about the Facebook posts of said local official and had not referred to any other source, let alone a right-wing one, I don’t know how else to interpret your comment. Just seems like you want to blame everything on Fox news whether it’s got anything to do with them or not. 
Don’t be disingenuous. It shows Mr Democratic School Board member is telling the truth that they added those ‘clarifications’ afterwards, in response to the concerns. And yeah, it’s nice to know they can’t/won’t be forcing schools to follow their recommendations, but so far as I can see they still are recommending no one study pre-calculus before grade 11, and presumably some schools will follow those recommendations, that being their purpose and all.
That’s worth having a debate over, even now we know the alarmism from the OP is unjustified.
I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I would bet you $10,000 that Zoster didn’t find out about this case by following Mr. Serotkin’s Facebook page. Don’t, as a wise person said, be disingenuous.
So what that they did? Clarifying state law isn’t a change to the law. What happened appears to be
- The VDOE made a proposal that was in line with state law.
- A local school board member posted a misunderstanding about the proposal on his Facebook page.
- The right-wing media lost their everloving shit, as they do about 3-4 times a week, based on a misunderstanding.
- The VDOE clarified that their proposal was in line with state law.
- (May be 3.5) Zoster posted here in line with the shit-losing right-wing media.
Your interpretations of what I’ve said have been wildly off-base, so I’m unconvinced that your interpretations of their recommendations are at all accurate. Can you quote the specific section of their proposal that you believe contains this recommendation?
We also weren’t talking about where Zoster found out about it. He can answer that for himself.
Personally I don’t like the hype, but I’m glad the media does report on things like this, so parents can hear about them while they are still in the proposal stages and make their feelings known. Just wish it wasn’t accompanied with such hysteria.
The OP was posted before the changes were made to the VDOE website.
I know the feeling. 
Zoster already pointed it out, it’s in their infographic explaining how their proposal would work:
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/mathematics/images/math-path.png
Yes, it’s just a recommendation and not compulsory, yadda yadda, but it doesn’t include any option to take the ‘Advanced Mathematics Concepts’ courses earlier than 11th grade, which I gather is commonly done today.
Cool! It turns out that when you say “they still are recommending no one study pre-calculus before grade 11,” you’re wildly misrepresenting what they say.
A restaurant offers a five-course meal, but diners have the option to switch the beef dish for a vegetarian dish. If the restaurant changes to a four-course meal, their new menu doesn’t mean they’re recommending that nobody eat a vegetarian dish: presumably their old policy of allowing folks to switch will still apply.
Virginia had an old recommended math course, but they allowed districts to have an accelerated option. They’re switching to a new recommended math course, but in no way does that imply that they’re now recommending that “no one study pre-calculus before grade 11.” There’s nothing there to suggest that they’re removing flexibility. They’re just changing the default.
The hysteria is the point. Without the hysteria, this isn’t a national story, this is a minor clarification a parent can ask their school district. Most parents wouldn’t bother asking, because most parents would get that this is a change to the default, not a removal of the options that have always been there. It’s only when a single school board member’s misunderstanding gets amplified by an outrage machine that’s dedicated to stoking culture wars that it becomes something that people worry about; and they worry about it based on misinformation.
Maybe you weren’t talking about the source, but that’s missing the real story here. The OP is pretty thoroughly incorrect, so what remains to talk about is why this sort of misinformation keeps spreading.
Can you show some evidence for this interpretation, please?
Are you serious? There’s nothing there that says NOT taking them is compulsory either. Nobody would take that seriously anyway.
Can you point out any direct evidence there exists a law that says eating 3 year old babies is illegal? Why not? My interpretation must then be that eating 3 year old babies is compulsory.
You’re employing some strange logic.
There’s this bullet, which seems to satisfy the accelerated coursework
- Local school divisions will still have plenty of flexibility to create courses aligned to the standards to meet the needs of all students; and provide opportunities for all students to advance through the curriculum based on their learning needs. School divisions will also be able to offer advanced sections and acceleration through the courses.
I feel the Virginian education webpage on the subject is entirely sensible and reasonable and I cannot fathom how people find anything objectionable about the proposal. Then again, I found the same about the Dr. Seuss stuff and other faux outrages.
Are you shitting me? Which part do you think is in question:
- They had an old recommended math course.
- People used to be able to accelerate under certain conditions.
- They suggested a new recommended math course.
- People would be able to accelerate under the new course.
- There’s nothing to suggest they’re removing flexibility.
Everything except 5 has been cited extensively in this thread. 5 is your job to cite the opposite of if you believe it’s true.
I’d like to see the old recommendations, and what the conditions were for accelerating, and how accelerating would work with the new recommendations that don’t have discrete courses until 11th grade. The fact that they specifically provide choices in grades 11 - 12 makes it appear there are no choices earlier on.
If you’d read the thread you’d see that the VDOE added the bullet point you quoted after all the outrage was generated. Apparently their video on the proposal gave the opposite impression.
There’s some kind of general reform movement going on in schools based on ‘equity’, and there are groups who are strongly opposed to these changes, so sections of the media have formed a narrative about it and quickly publish any story that fits that narrative without doing much to verify it. One sees this all the time on different issues.
Okay, um, good luck with that. You’re not saying which items you think aren’t true, and I’m not interested in fulfilling this request. But maybe if you ask nicely I’ll dance like a monkey.
You are completely ignoring then about what Data Analysis, Modeling, Spatial Reasoning and Provably can and does include.
And again, there is no evidence that they prevented or will prevent the use of Pre-calculus or calculus early on; particularly in Data Analysis, getting to know at least about the basics of calculus is an important part of it.
Kids these days, with all their choices! We had honors algebra>geometry>pre-cal>cal 9-12 year-by-year and no choice about the matter and, dammit, we liked it!!! 
Seriously, I am envious of the choices I see there.
The thing to keep in mind would be that it is broadly understood by people involved in administering education in Virginia (which is my home state, and fwiw I knew this long before this topic came up), that the state BOE sets baseline guidelines but that individual divisions develop their own specific curriculum. There are lots of (usually wealthier, more suburban) districts that have always had a lot more advanced options, AP classes and other offerings that lower income, more rural districts don’t offer. This is all stuff offered in addition to the advised courses from the BOE.
Serotkin appears to have only been elected to the school board a couple years ago, and doesn’t come from an education background. So I’m assuming he just didn’t understand how BOE guidelines worked and was genuinely confused. I’d like to see school board members a little more conversant in the basic laws of the commonwealth governing schools, but this is kind of what happens when anyone from the community can run for school board. District Superintendents (the people who really run the local school systems on a day to day basis) probably never had any confusion as they are much more familiar with the VA BOE and its remit and what its recommendations mean.
Back when the country was more sane, this likely isn’t even news because one random confused school board member in one county in VA just doesn’t make the national news. But because it’s tied into a right wing propaganda machine and a topic they have issue with (the word and broad concept of equity), the moment Serotkin spoke it got magnified by algorithms, bots, and other things that cause this stuff to bubble up from right wing manufactured news and disinformation blogs to the “right wing talking heads” with the bigger platforms. Back in the sane times, this whole thing likely would have been a letter from Serotkin to the VA BOE and a letter back explaining his confusion, and probably reformatting their informational materials so it was clearer.
Precisely right.
Here are the existing Standards of Learning for Mathematics adopted in 2016 (scroll about halfway down the page for the grade-level links; a link to the 2009 version is just below). You’ll note there is a standard for “8th grade math” and then separate standards for algebra I, etc., for high-schoolers. I don’t see anything like the pathway graphic as to what courses went with which grade level AFTER eighth grade, but apparently the expectation or “standard” was that 8th graders took 8th grade math. The VBOE didn’t give conditions for accelerating; acceleration, under the existing standards of learning, isn’t even mentioned as a possibility.
Obviously, of course, it IS a possibility, since some Virginia school districts right now are offering 8th graders courses that are not the standard “8th grade math,” but that’s a local decision that the VBOE just doesn’t wade into.
Moderating: This thread has gone completely off the rails. He said/she said. Or they_1 said/they_2 said (not to mention 3 and 4). Closed.