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

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

#161

Post by nemo44x »

ecshafer wrote: post #100
2sk21 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New Jersey and Massachusetts at least, there is absolutely no move to water down the math curriculum in any way. On the contrary, the schools here compete on how many AP courses are offered.

New Jersey also has an excellent practices of magnet schools at the county level. So that even if you are in a poorer school district you can go study and apply for a magnet school at the county that is better and more focused on high academic schools. These schools focus on basically college level education for their area in health care, biochem, technology, arts, etc. with many AP courses. The normal public schools…

One thing I notice in NJ is that although there are plenty of private schools and academy's, you still see a lot of people in multi-million dollar homes paying 60k a year in property taxes sending their kids to the public high school. Even the most progressive mother wouldn't do that if the schools weren't at least up to snuff at offering the curriculum that can get their kids into "good" universites.

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

#162

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #133
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

Stats requires calculus; you can't even define a probability distribution without some pretty advanced notions of real analysis. Discrete math, linear algebra etc. are viable alternatives.

Is this really true, in practice? For example, given its importance in every day life, I think everyone should understand test sensitivity and specificity, and how these relate to but are quite different from predictive value positive and predictive value negative. All of those topics can be understood with basic algebra. Similarly, I recall my introduction to biostatistics class I took at an Ivy League institution, and I don't really recall using calculus much in any of it.

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

#163

Post by micromacrofoot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #107
micromacrofoot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declining math scores can be tied almost entirely tied to economic disparity (which unfortunately tracks with race pretty closely). Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind. Unfortunately I don't expect these changes to impact that. It will likely take more rich kids out of public schools and further widen the gap.

> Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind The achievement gap is growing. Part of this is explained by union dynamics [1]. Part by California's elites caring less about addressing the gap than talking about it. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X2110063...

yuup

> Altogether, this study provides some evidence that contract changes are associated with the educational opportunities of school districts’ diverse and economically disadvantaged students.

Essentially, if you want to prioritize your child's education above all else, get them into the richest school district you can manage.

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

#164

Post by shmde »

cwkoss wrote: post #128
kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

Lets say you need to find the probability of something happening 10% of the time to 40% of the time, you need to perform definite integration of the curve ( lets say normal curve ) from 0.1 to 0.4 on the x axis multiplied by the normal curve function. This is one of the easiest examples I could remember from my undergrad. We could solve these problems with ease at undergraduate level because we grinded hard during our high school. And also these type of problems were just a subset of the huge variety of problems presented during our undergraduate. But lets say they started teaching calculus only during Undergrad it would have become a tremendous task just to first learn about calculus then start with applying it on other subjects. I am all in for teaching calculus during high school.

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

#165

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

jeffbee wrote: post #125
RangerScience wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: algebra != arithmetic AKA real math doesn't use numbers I'm only good at _arithmetic_ because of making Warhammer 40k armies (true story bro). I'm good at _algebra_ because I was taught well, on top of a knack. Speed with basic algebraic operations was very helpful in many places but speed with arithmetic operations has only been helpful in board games. I don't think anyone here would disagree with your point…

But strong arithmetic fundamentals are absolutely necessary for strong algebra. I've watched kids struggle with basic algebra because when they don't instantly recognize that 7x8=56, they also don't recognize that 7zx8z=56z(edit: squared). Edit: thanks to the reply; HN ate my superscript 2. Apparently it doesn't like the unicode multiplication x, either: × ² ?

Good point ... however, 7z*8z=56z^2.

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

#166

Post by FFRefresh »

kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

I don't doubt that the people crafting these proposals care. I think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I personally think it's just increasingly popular, mistaken moral beliefs that inform these types of proposals. Some of the underlying beliefs:

1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability

2. Any observable differences between humans are merely the result of social factors

3. Any observable differences in outcomes between groups of humans are the result of oppression from the majority group

4. If you observe differences at your org/institution, it's your moral duty to create policies which disfavor groups of humans performing better and to favor groups of humans performing worse, as those performance differences are due to oppression.

If these beliefs undergird your worldview, and your social groups/information environment reinforce and reward these beliefs, it is of no surprise that we'll see a lot of people soberly propose the types of policies we see here. I can empathize that they really do think they are fighting the good fight, and are doing the right thing for society.

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

#168

Post by falcor84 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #133
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

Stats requires calculus; you can't even define a probability distribution without some pretty advanced notions of real analysis. Discrete math, linear algebra etc. are viable alternatives.

You can't even define arithmetic on natural numbers without some pretty advanced notions of logic and set theory. But you can definitely get a lot of value from arithmetic without those definitions.

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

#169

Post by pessimizer »

alimov wrote: post #79
zozbot234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, tracking is awful for the low-track students because guess what, no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers. So the students are trapped in that situation, being taught by terrible teachers who don't actually care for their educational achievement, and unable to improve. You see those outcomes across the board, including in the celebrated German system of academic vs. vocatio…

> “…no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers.” If you look at people that are not academically inclined and call them under performers then maybe that’s part of the issue. I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and if someone is more inclined to do vocational training rather than the standard track I think their strengths and interests should be developed / encouraged. An educator…

It's not whether people are more suited for vocational or "standard track." It's our aptitude for judging that in children.

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

#170

Post by throwawayboise »

jeffbee wrote: post #142
cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

I had calculus before college, got a 5 on the AP calculus exam, and it did not seem to have prepared me in any way for college-level calculus. I always thought that had been a total waste of one of my senior year class periods.

I took calculus in High School, it was a dual credit course with a state university. I got credit at the university for the first semester of calculus (which was taught over the entire year in High School, so at a slower pace, but also allowed the High School class to spend more time on review in the first month or so, compared to college courses which basically dive right in). We took the same exams as the university course.

I felt I was prepared for 2nd semester calculus when I took that as my first math course in college.

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