Here 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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mym1990 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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odyssey7 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, even in highly ranked master’s programs, “rigor” is sometimes improperly used to describe how miserable the student experience is, instead of how deeply students are expected to master some subject. Some of the most “rigorous” courses I’ve ever taken failed to go beyond my undergraduate coursework or to expect any sophisticated insight from me. The TAs would seem confused about some parts of the courses themselves, adding to a sense of “rigor.”

While I seek out courses with high expectations and appreciate a challenge, I do my moral duty when I raise issues about courses that are “rigorous” in ways unrelated to that. When someone says “rigor,” unfortunately these days, you have to confirm what they mean by that word, because some faculty seem to use it as a cover for shirking their responsibilities to their students — or worse, as an excuse for being actively hostile.

We cannot allow incorrect assertions of “rigor” to lower our intellectual standards to that of our most incompetent instructors. Students should advocate for higher standards.

	▲	mym1990 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So far in my experience the students actually seem fine with the instructors and TAs, but are complaining that 400 pages of reading over the course of half a semester is too much. They complain that the reading is repeating the lecture material and is a waste of time, or that the papers we are reading are dated(despite the concepts still holding true). By rigor, I don't mean busy work, I mean students don't have the attention span to sit down for any length of period and execute on the material they need to learn. They don't want to study for "useless exams" and don't seem to want to be assessed on anything really.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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Scubabear68 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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nothercastle 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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thevillagechief 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is true for most other countries. When I went to school before college, Math was just Math. There wasn't a Calculus or Algebra or Statistics class. You took Math and just did all of it in the Math class over the years, and you couldn't pick and choose. The distinctions only start in College. So everyone who graduated high school at least knew what each of these were about, even if they flat out flunked Math. I can't say how useful that was though.

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bananaflag 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who is "they" here?

	▲	nothercastle 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I use Russian School of Math as a proxy since their curriculum is supposedly based on former Soviet curriculum . They have a bunch of chapters on the west coast

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mistrial9 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> they introduce variables in 2nd grade

you are not familiar with public education here. In one coastal city, more than 40 languages are spoken by students at home, with Spanish being a large component.

What I am saying is that 9th grade through 12th grade public standard curriculum is the topic of debate, with some groups, today, advocating removal of "advanced placement' courses in a broad way.

There is massive difference between certain particular schools, and the broad standardized, State-assigned curriculum.

	▲	nothercastle 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seattle? SF? Schools They are just suck but even adjacent functional districts don’t teach like that. The educational and conceptual math philosophy is simply different. Variables are really interesting at elementary school age because they really flush out when a student doesn’t understand the concept and allows the teacher or parent to correct it early. Numbers sometimes mask what’s going on and let students take shortcuts that hurt them later

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altcognito 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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mistrial9 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree your headline is two years old

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altcognito 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It would have been less effort and more useful to provide a citation on your original comment, but you chose this.

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fwip 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I cannot find any evidence to support your assertion that there is any momentum whatsoever after 2024 for moving Algebra to grade 9.

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lern_too_spel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Almost every school district in Silicon Valley offers multivariable calculus in high school. In the ones that don't, the constituents are pushing to add it. Your description is precisely the opposite of what is happening in California.

	▲	mistrial9 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		East Santa Clara County public schools are doing what now?

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mysterydip 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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lubujackson 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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pizzafeelsright 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ignoring the stabbings and shootings, the children are not disciplined, properly supported, or permitted to excel. The speed of education moves at the slowest students and interrupted by the most disruptive.

The teachers cannot fail a student so the illiterates move up with the educated, where the gap becomes evident, the disruptions turns to abuse and attacks because the feral children cannot maintain civility.

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aleph_minus_one 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Ignoring the stabbings and shootings, the children are not disciplined, properly supported, or permitted to excel. The speed of education moves at the slowest students and interrupted by the most disruptive.

"Smart" and "disruptive" are in my opinion at least uncorrelated, perhaps there even exists a non-trivial relationship:

In my observation often children who are either much less or more smart than the average are the more disruptive ones, though the children at the two the ends of this spectrum differ in the kinds of disruptions.

	▲	pizzafeelsright 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Bell curve. Top 10% of smart are trying to do the work. The bottom 10% are avoiding the work, finding a way to kill their boredom through disruptions. That middle 80% cannot stay or complete tasks because of the disruptions. Segregation by IQ, GPA, or test scores would help those who are capable of achieving what is possible.

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odyssey7 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you care about this, I’d suggest rethinking how much it centers around labeling some children as “gifted” and asserting that they are intrinsically more deserving of higher quality educational opportunities than the other children who were born undeserving.

Really, the general public isn’t that interested in a program that says other children are more talented than their own children, and that their tax dollars should therefore give their own children a second-tier educational experience.

This is the land of opportunity. Why not just offer advanced coursework for all who could reasonably succeed and whose parents are willing to drive to the school every morning?

	▲	bongoman42 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is a good reason why public schools shouldn't exist or at least there should be freedom to choose which school your kid should go to. People should retain the tax for schools and deploy them as they see best for their kids.