…should be all the more in favor of curricular reforms that will produce better individualized math instruction that meaningfully accommodates such differences.
The idea that a teacher is going to somehow teach multiple courses at the same time when teaching students in ability cohorts right now is hard enough is a fantasy, especially given the ideological drivers of this proposal. It’s hard enough to get the least-capable students to understand geometry in 10th grade, somehow we’re going to do that AND teach trig to the advanced students in the same classroom at the same time? How? Where has this ever worked? Who is going to subject themselves to it instead of moving to a school district in another state that doesn’t purport to be trying such nonsense? (The answer to the last question, of course, is, “teachers who have no other choice” - in addition to the best students this change will also drive off the best math teachers and reduce median quality there.)
They’re just going to teach to the level of the biggest dullard in the room and let everyone else wither, as is the intent.
That’s generally a better approach to a subject in mathematics than just drilling all students through the same rote algorithms and formulas to cover the same material.
So right now we “drill on rote algorithms” according to ??? source, and by ignoring individual student difference and increasing teacher workload, we’re somehow going to open the door to better, more involved forms of learning. Which we definitely need since Virginia math education is in such a crisis that it’s the #5 ranked state in math scores.
The proposal will eliminate calculus before 12th grade, despite the fact that it is currently taught to thousands of 10th and 11th grade students in Virginia each year. There are multiple posters in this thread suggesting that calculus in high school or preparation for calculus in college be eliminated entirely.
Who is being quoted here?
Differentiated instruction isn’t about “teaching multiple courses at the same time”. It’s about teaching material in ways that permit multiple approaches the material, and allow motivated students to explore further ramifications of the material independently.
You don’t seem able to make up your mind as to whether you think this proposal will mean that “NO ONE” will be “allowed to take calculus in high school”, or just that they can’t take calculus “before 12th grade”, and you haven’t provided any proof of either of those assertions.
Which isn’t surprising, because according to the information in the very site your OP linked to, both those assertions are wrong. Calculus is one of the courses proposed in the Grades 11-12 curriculum which “may include Dual Enrollment and Advanced Placement”. So it is certain that high-achieving students could easily take calculus in 11th grade, perhaps in some cases concurrently with one of the “prerequisite” subjects. And it seems very likely under a differentiated-instruction model that some especially strong students could place into calculus while still in 10th grade.
The quoted articles pretty clearly say that prior to 11th grade, EVERYONE takes the same math class. Do posters agree with that attribution? If so, do they agree with that concept? I personally think it is an insane idea. Put aside whether this or that student can take Calculus. You think that every.single.kid. should take the same math class from K-10? Insane.
You keep saying the bolded part (perhaps even more often than “equity cult”) but it doesn’t appear to be at all accurate. None of the reasons given by those proposing the changes include anything to do with their political beliefs and all cite better outcomes for more students.
Sure. Also, I have a bridge to sell you and my self-cited motive for wanting to do so is that you will get a great deal on it and enjoy being a bridge owner.
So your position is “they are lying”? Do you have any evidence of that?
Another district killing math acceleration explicitly in the name of “equity.” Are we ready to admit this is going on yet?
And all this is doing is giving the best students the chance to take Algebra I in 8th grade instead of 9th as is standard. This isn’t “rushing everyone into calculus,” supporting this is literally saying that no one should be even a little bit ahead of the median in any way.
When did algebra in 8th grade even become an option? For me (and many of my peers) everybody was in the same math class K-8 in the 80s. Calculus wasn’t offered until grade 12, but high school grade were split up to three or four tracks.
I can find references to the kind of acceleration being discussed here (offering the prealgebra-algebra-geometry-algebra 2 sequence to earlier grades than the standard 8th-11th setup) as early as 1984 in a search of news coverage. Because education in the U.S. is so decentralized, there’s no one answer for when it started, but in Virginia, which is the original subject of this thread, acceleration was commonly offered to above-average math students by the early 90s and the idea of “double” or “triple” acceleration for the highest tier of students existed at least in some places by that time.
In searching for information on the history of math education I found that the debates from the 1920s-1950s were remarkably similar to today’s controversies in a lot of ways; “progressive” education as defined in the 20s claimed to emphasize “relevant life skills” and “activity” but ended up basically teaching nothing, to the point that the end recipients of high school graduates (colleges, the military, and employers) said “hey, these people can barely multiple two-digit numbers, this must be fixed.” And this was at a time when graduating high school was NOT a social expectation for people who weren’t considered somewhat intelligent and middle-class - even they, on average, had virtually no math skills. As is known, the 1950s space race spurred a re-evaluation of the then-sorry state of math and science education in the U.S. and led to the development of more rigorous curricula.
I believe their preferred term is race realists or human biodiversity proponents.
That’s an argument for spending a lot more time on fundamentals of number sense and basic mathematics rather than racing ahead to the calculus, is it not?
Also, re: your link about San Mateo-Foster City, the school district there says nearly a third of their graduates don’t meet the University of California math standards, that students not in the accelerated track tend to struggle with math when they get into high school, and that “studies [show] that grouping students together in elementary school improved outcomes for all students and that later grades were more appropriate for math acceleration.” Therefore, they want to keep all kids together in sixth grade and start accelerated programs in seventh grade in an attempt to avoid graduating a bunch of students who “can barely multiple two-digit numbers.”
Your dispute with San Mateo, as near as I can tell, can be summarized as “it should be okay to leave poor performers behind and allow them to have worse outcomes, as long as the good students get to complete algebra in middle school.”
No, the solution to the educational methods completely failing is not to lower standards to the point that failure is defined as success. In any case, the problem in 1950 was certainly not that high school students were being “raced ahead to calculus.”
Also, re: your link about San Mateo-Foster City, the school district there says nearly a third of their graduates don’t meet the University of California math standards
It’s bad enough to take students capable of handling trigonometry in 10th grade and force them to sit through the basic geometry class - grouping them with people who graduate unable to do math is even more cruel. Again, the idea that someone is going to teach remedial math to the dullards, which is a very difficult task, while simultaneously teaching “deeper concepts and understanding” appropriate for the most capable students, in the same class at the same time, is a ridiculous fantasy and it’s very hard for me to accept that anyone actually believes this will go on as opposed to just letting the talented kids wither.
that students not in the accelerated track tend to struggle with math when they get into high school
Right, the students who aren’t part of the accelerated program suck at math. Which is another way of saying, their family environment doesn’t value education and the unionized teachers and administrators in California have no incentive to address the achievement gap created by this situation. They will just continue to collect $92,000 a year salaries for working thirty hours a week nine months a year with no possibility of being fired for poor performance, while complaining about being overworked and underpaid.
The fact that California’s education system has so blatantly de-prioritized teaching basic skills to the people who need it most for so long is the real problem for the underachievers, but fixing that would require slaughtering a lot of sacred cows. It’s much easier to just forbid the top students from learning anything, redefine the goal of education as “equity,” and declare victory once we’re all equally ignorant of how to do algebra.
Your dispute with San Mateo, as near as I can tell, can be summarized as “it should be okay to leave poor performers behind and allow them to have worse outcomes, as long as the good students get to complete algebra in middle school.”
My dispute is with the notion that fucking over the good students is any kind of solution to the poor performers. It’s not even that they are saying it’s an acceptable cost of doing business (which I would also dispute) but that it’s actively good - they’re so blinded by notions of “equitable outcomes” that they think anyone who does well has some “privilege” that must be taken away.
Where are you getting “lower standards” out of this?
In San Mateo, they’re talking about SIXTH-GRADERS, so why are you discussing trig? What is your evidence showing that separating stronger and weaker math students as early as sixth grade leads to better outcomes for either group? San Mateo separates them now, and they say it is not working for them. Apparently you know better, so let’s see your evidence? (Also remember that most of the kids not going into accelerated math are not in fact “dullards”; they’re average kids. The accelerated program was for the best and brightest.)
BULLCRAP.
Kids vary in math abilities for a whole host of reasons. Some may be due to family environment, but that certainly isn’t the only reason.
For example, I offer myself. I was a bright kid from a family that valued education and expected me to follow my parents to university. I was National Honor Society, National Merit Scholar, graduated college summa cum laude and have a graduate degree. Also, I suck at math. I have always struggled with math, going back at least as far as third or fourth grade, and putting me into an accelerated math program was never even a consideration (advanced English and honors history? yes. staying on grade level with math? barely happening, even with unionized teachers devoting extra time to working with me and trying to help me). Does that make me a lesser person in your eyes? Am I a “dullard” because I have no particular aptitude for math?
San Mateo is in fact trying prioritize teaching basic skills to everyone, including those who need it most. They think they have evidence that keeping sixth graders together will advance that cause, and you want to prevent them from trying, all to advance an agenda of making sure the best and brightest finish algebra in 8th grade and who cares what happens to the rest.
Hyperbole about “declare victory once we’re all equally ignorant of how to do algebra” doesn’t help your cause, because the San Mateo program is designed to prepare students to take algebra in 9th grade. (The San Mateo-Foster City district does not have a high school, as it only educates through 8th grade, but here for example is a list of the math classes at one of the high schools in San Mateo. As their math progression chart illustrates, a motivated student who starts with Algebra I in 9th grade can still get through Calculus BC by 12th.)
In San Mateo, they saw they had a problem with underachievers, and they looked for a way to solve that problem, to raise the overall level of achievement and mathematical success in their district. Whether their solution actually works remains to be seen, but I certainly don’t see that giving good students a path to completing Calculus BC in high school amounts to “fucking them over.”
I have personal experience of this since my high school in the UK (ages 11 - 16) was opposed to tracking. Ironically, it did still track for maths after age 14, probably because it’s one of the subjects with the widest range of abilities and it would have been impossible to teach all levels in one group.
Mostly the teachers taught to a level somewhat below the average. The poorest students were unable to keep up and would get what small amount of individual attention the teacher was able to spare them. In the last few years we were preparing for exams, and the teachers were effectively forced to teach 3 different courses in one class, which meant each student got only 1/3 of the teaching and attention they would have had if we’d been tracked. Any teacher is going to have a harder job teaching a really wide range of abilities, and have less time left to give attention to any one student.
Unlike Kimstu’s experience, all my maths teachers after high school complained that we had not been taught the necessary prerequisites (though this is not due to lack of advanced courses, but the dumbing down of exams so that schools can achieve better ratings) and we spent our time struggling to catch up to where we should be.
I bet the great majority of the posters in this thread did do some sort of advanced education at school and don’t have the experience to say this proposal is better. Am I right?
I’m going to stop you right there because your ignorance is showing. You seem to think that kids are either equally advanced in all areas or are “dullards” who should be prepared for trade school and kept from college prep classes. You should be ashamed of such antiquated thinking. I had many bright students who excelled in one curricular area but were merely adequate in others.
Furthermore, a learning disability is not an indication of a “dullard,” to use your antiquated term. My daughter was reading at the ninth grade level before she finished kindergarten. She also had a math learning disability. She has a graduate degree from an excellent university and was described by her grad school advisor as one of the most brilliant students to have come through the program. Oh, and “their family environment didn’t value education”? Her father is a college professor and her mother a high school teacher. We not only valued education, our kids were immersed in it.
I certainly hope you’re not on your local school board and that you have little influence on your local education system. Ignorant, elitist viewpoints don’t do students any favors.
What a shame that you went to such a substandard school. It wasn’t substandard because it didn’t track, however.
The high school where I taught is pretty typical of US public schools. We most emphatically did not “dumb down” the curriculum nor the teaching of it . In English, science, and social studies courses, students took the same courses in 9th and 10th grades. Competent teachers know how to challenge more advanced students in those courses without ignoring average or slower learners, and students who had trouble got extra help, both in class and outside class. Math and foreign language classes were different because the course options for middle schoolers were different. This is all pretty typical for most US public schools.
In the US, all students take the same state tests. There’s no option for “dumbing down” tests so that they’re easier to pass.
You shouldn’t assume your experience is typical, nor that it indicates anything about tracking.
To be completely honest, I’m not sure. The research seems to indicate that tracking pre-11th grade is harmful to average and below-average students and not particularly helpful for above-average students. I tend to trust the research, but I’m sure it’s possible that it’s faulty.
I explained my personal experience earlier in the thread. I was aggressively tracked early on, and did fine. But I did notice that many of my peers had significant issues keeping up in the track they were placed in. And then they “tested out” of introductory college Calculus courses by cramming for the AP exams (with only enough knowledge to pass the exam) only to really struggle in engineering and physics courses where they actually had to use that math. There was also immense pressure at the middle school level to get in the “right track” because parents and teachers knew that once you were placed that was pretty much it.
I’m very open to the idea that teaching a common curriculum to all students prior to 11th grade, but differentiating within the classroom through depth, not speed of acquiring new content, may produce better math outcomes for all students (or, perhaps, better outcomes for all except the top cohort and neutral outcomes for the high cohort). Fortunately technology is making it much easier for teachers to provide that sort of differentiation (automatic worksheet generation, scaling apps, complicated applications of concepts, etc).
It would also potentially address an issue that I also lived through, which is that as early as 7th and 8th grade students are basically told “you are bad at math”. That was not communicated through grades, or additional work, or natural teacher feedback (all of which can be motivating) but through a literal separating from your peers. Smart kids over here, dumb kids over there. Needless to say that is a very self-fulfilling system, especially when added to a tracking system that locks off the highest level courses from those kids a full 6 years before they would ever take them.
Gifted students (as defined by state law) always receive interventional support as well, at least in my state.
I heartily agree.