An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

Downsides are that kids develop at different times, have different educational needs, have home life issues that can temporarily derail progress, etc and if those happen around the time kids are getting tracked, they may not reach their full potential.

A good education system would offer students a way to rise up whenever they're ready to rise up, let them learn at their pace, focus on mastery, build upon knowledge gained rather than schedule followed, etc. There's a lot of edtech out there that incorporate these concepts but school models struggle to integrate it into the (literally) old school way they operate. It's quite difficult to reorient school around these new concepts at scale, it has to be done school-by-school, leader-by-leader, school board by school board.

Agree its complex, as it may be the 'best of the worst' option for certain contexts. Anything involving balancing equity/access/etc is like that.

It's saying that it is impossible to get the bulk of students (with the teachers we have) to complete the standard mathematics curriculum by the end of high school. This has always been true, in all countries, hence "streaming". But now they're saying let's do away with the advanced stream, therefore students can't complete the last part of the US mathematics curriculum (which is called "Calculus"). Rather than justify that move in terms of cost or fairness, we're going to say "because Calculus isn't important now".

This is obviously completely bogus. If their assertion that Leibnitz-style calculus isn't important now, they could replace it with Linear Algebra, Number Theory, or some other "important now" subject.

Add to that, the fact that in the US the names of high school mathematics classes are by convention. "Geometry" isn't all geometry, for example. And "Calculus" isn't all calculus. The classes are really : Math 1, Math 2, Math 3, Math 4, AP Math.

I think establishing a foundation of addition and subtraction takes far longer for children to master than you're considering, especially since there is evidence that children of this age appear to intuitively view numbers logarithmically rather than linearly [0].

I suppose you could take advantage of this by somehow prioritizing multiplication and division over addition and subtraction, but I think there's too much value in comprehension of linear numbers and addition/subtraction since that is the lion's share of interactions they will experience at that age.

On the other hand, if you're merely talking about abstracting multiplication and division into patterns, then I wholeheartedly agree with you, and there is evidence supporting this [1]. Although pattern identification is already part of kindergarten/1st grade curriculum here.

Ultimately, IMO the most important aspect of education in general is covered in the open letter linked to the OP:

> There cannot be a “one size fits all” approach to K-12 mathematical education.

My children have thrived with their current math curriculum, and I know some of their classmates have struggled in contrast. One size does not fit all in education, nor in many aspects of life.

0: https://news.mit.edu/2012/thinking-logarithmically-1005 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15248372.2012.68...

This seems a little off. What we're talking about (and what it seems like you're defending) is directing more resources towards the most gifted. It's fine to believe that, but it's an argument to give the most to those who have the most. Nobody is pulling anyone down, and communists are as happy to grant power and resources to those with aptitude and connections as capitalists are.

edit: with the constant attacks on teachers, it might be more realistic to stop aiming for calculus in high school. Any kid who manages it within a gutted public system would have gotten there anyway, no matter what situation they found themselves in. They can download calculus books and calculus lectures now; with the internet a feral education is within everyone's reach.