alt Hacker NewsHere in California, apparently algebra is "too hard" for 8th graders.. the tests scores look bad, so "algebra" is now a target of political action.. to remove it.
Seriously, public schools in California are proposing removing the advanced math classes completely. This is not an old story, this is now.
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It's not just California. New Jersey is experiencing this problem too. We simultaneously have gigantic floods of money into school budgets, but also no true oversight. There are all sorts of theoretical laws and guidelines, but they are not enforced by the State Dept of Ed or County Superintendents.
The result is we have control only at the local school district level, which is typically run by a board of locally elected citizens with no idea what they are doing and no experience in either education or running large organizations. The school boards are popularity contests that controls tens and hundreds of millions of dollars with no discipline.
Predictably, in that environment actual learning is dumbed down as far as it can go. Social promotion is rampant, as is grade inflation and things like coloring books being used as far as middle school grades. Huge monies are spent and wasted on technology and consultants.
In NJ, they need to add in hard-core oversight of budgets and get rid of the massive focus on "equity" and social issues, and get back to the Three R's. They are starting to go in that direction with elimination of "screens", but it is being done in a hamfisted way.
Meanwhile they introduce variables in 2nd grade and algebra isn’t a separate concept it’s simply how math is done. Every math concept and operation is slowly introduced with numbers then variables before moving on to the next concept. It’s a great way to do it in my opinion
This information was out of date and wrong over 2 years ago: https://share.google/aimode/VZb1Csc0pR47IOIA1
California passed SB1410 which protects access to Algebra, which is a little weird in and of itself, but there it is.
It’s the old “ When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. When everything looks at certain scoring methods to (in the end) determine funding allocation, the incentive is to maximize score over education.
In SF, school admins push "equality of outcomes" over "equality of opportunities" which was the basis for removing all gifted and differentiated learning programs. Finally, an achievable goal for school districts, which seems to prioritize fixing income disparity above any other goal, despite having no ability to make much difference since education is not a closed system. Those with means go to private schools or hire tutors, and the gap just worsens.
Keeping the "clever poors" in their place seems to be one thing the left and right agree on.
I am doing a masters program at a pretty reputable and highly ranked school...there is a good bit of complaining going on about there being too much reading, content being too dense, tests being a useless waste of time...just overall laziness. This is for one of the easier classes in the program. It is too bad, it feels like the rigor is being taken out of everything, any sign of 'effort' being exerted in academics or otherwise is immediately met with complaining.