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'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

joannejacobs.com

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Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#101

Post by akomtu »

Dalewyn wrote: post #22
jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…

>Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! As someone who fucking hated and still hates academical math: No, kids do not need math. Not in the sense as taught in schools, anyway. That is a straight waste of precious time. What kids need is broader context and guidance for what math is, how it applies to the world around us, how we can use it, and why it's important. Fuck quadratic e…

How otherwise are you going to develop abstract thinking? There's a huge boulder in front of you and you need to hire a truck to move it. But to do that you need to know the weight of the boulder. How do you measure it? Or there is a very tall tree you need to cut down, but if the tree is too tall, it might fall on your house. How do you measure its height?

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#102

Post by PKop »

remote_phone wrote: post #63

If you were a hardcore racist and systematically wanted to keep Black and Brown kids uneducated, you would throw out all expectations and requirements and let them pass every year until they graduated high school with almost no education. The white kids and the rich kids will find a way to educate themselves, either through tutors or private school but the poor kids with no options would be stuck in this worthless sy…

It's absurd that you blame this on "white supremacists". This entire ethos is the egalitarian morality whereby they cannot have differentiated learning or high standards that expose differences in outcomes by racial group.

This elimination of curriculum, and testing requirements, particularly as application criteria at elite colleges, is allowing for more under-performing students to gain entry to elite school while doing away with merit based, race blind enrollment. We are seeing systematic anti-racism. You have anti-racists in charge of the curriculum. This is what it looks like. Don't get it twisted.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#103

Post by nverno »

Avicebron wrote: post #98
nverno wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were saying they split the old 1-year course across the two new 8/9th grade courses, but added in a bunch of extra stuff to the each of the replacement courses- useful modern stuff like data analysis and statistical modeling. They were making the point of focusing on deeper understanding through real world applications instead of rote memorization, which sounds good in theory, but takes up the time that was prev…

I'm pretty sure I was too...and I did not go to an elite middle/high school by any stretch of the imagination. Also, maybe I was just lucky in my math teachers as a kid, but I can't for the life of me remember rote memorization in math for almost anything outside of maybe being forced to memorize times tables at some point. I honestly thought memorization had been disproven to be effective eons ago.

Memorization was the wrong word - I think they are referring repetitive processes like solving algebra equations over and over again until it's second nature. Probably an essential component of mastering basic math as a useful tool, at least it was for me - but focused on procedure not broader understanding I guess.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#104

Post by shrimp_emoji »

Avicebron wrote: post #33

I'll be the first to admit that I'm chronically stupid, but can someone help parse the linked SFUSD's decision for me: https://www.sfusdmath.org/richard-carranzas-remarks-to-board... (it's linked in the article as the decision to push math back a year). But I'm having trouble understanding why not exposing students to a subject earlier would be better for their development with that subject. Are they supposed to abso…

It hurts underperformers.

https://jhr.uwpress.org/content/50/1/159

>We find no evidence of a positive mean impact of acceleration in any specification and significant negative effects on performance in both Algebra I and the traditional followup course, Geometry. Accelerating algebra to middle school appears benign or beneficial for higherperforming students but unambiguously harmful to the lowest performers. We consider whether the effects reflect the reliance on less-qualified teachers and conclude that this mechanism explains only a small fraction of the result.

Anecdata, fwliw: I learned multiplication and division in preschool, and I still loathed math to the point of neglecting it later (maybe because of how hellish math kept on being through 1st and 2nd grade overseas). I didn't even fully understand fractions when I took the SAT. (I'm just lucky my reading/writing were stellar. ;) (So that I could go on to fail both calc 1 and 2 when taking CS in uni. Made it through the second time though, mwahaha!)

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#105

Post by kelseyfrog »

bendbro wrote: post #85
sp332 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that if it’s important to rich parents, they will grudgingly fund education for everyone. But as long as they have these outlets where they can just educate their own kids and leave everyone else behind, they will.

Some students need to be left behind

Which ones are those again?

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#106

Post by pigsty »

macspoofing wrote: post #25
jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…

What’s the fix? It’s not the system. If you have parents that are involved in education and engage in the kind of child-rearing, that is conducive to education - it doesn’t matter the kind of system you’re operating under (keep in mind, our bar for success is very low - we want kids that graduate high-school to be functionally literate with basic arithmetic and basic general knowledge). Put another way, if a child gr…

My parents were straight D/F students and never helped me with classes at all. I would’ve appreciated help that would’ve let me go farther, but that’s at a point well past algebra.

Parents are part of the problem, but it seems like we’re just desperately trying to pin the responsibility on one specific person in the child’s life and put it out of their personal responsibility. That’s not the case. Some kids get everything they need to succeed provided for them and have plenty of assistance and choose to fail. Some have nothing but barriers put all around them and they still bust their ass to succeed.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#107

Post by User23 »

vnchr wrote: post #83
TimTheTinker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the name of equity That's the problem. We're dealing with the critical theory definition of equity, which they define as the intentional redistribution of opportunity and resources along identity group lines to correct for present and historical injustices, as well as opportunities those groups have already had. Critical theory and social justice adopts a distorted view of reality. Leave it to a school in San Fr…

Inequality is increased because those without resources aren’t receiving any new benefits and those with resources use those resources to compensate for the failure of the system to provide an education optimal path. It’s worse outcomes for both, except some people can shield themselves from the fallout. What new kind of self-inflicted damage will be required to realize the detrimental failure of this world view?

Where do the resources come from?

Also, among those who aren’t willfully ignorant, it’s well known that increasing resources increases inequality. The classic example is height: when resources are low everyone is short. But when resources are plentiful then those with the genes for height tower above those without.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#108

Post by [deleted] »

Dalewyn wrote: post #22
jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…

>Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! As someone who fucking hated and still hates academical math: No, kids do not need math. Not in the sense as taught in schools, anyway. That is a straight waste of precious time. What kids need is broader context and guidance for what math is, how it applies to the world around us, how we can use it, and why it's important. Fuck quadratic e…

[deleted]

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#109

Post by lolinder »

gumby wrote: post #84
thaumasiotes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So anyway the point is Berkeley has always done math the "reform" way and its math outcomes are much better in every respect. If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade, it's not getting even halfway decent results. If they're better than the results in San Francisco, all you can learn from that is that Berkeley has extreme problems with student quality, and quality is even lower…

> If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade High school in the US ends at 12th grade -- how do they teach physics without calculus?

There are three different AP Physics tests—1, 2, and C—and only AP Physics C requires calculus. The others presumably give you the formulas and expect you to memorize them and use algebra rather than being able to derive them.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#110

Post by m-ee »

gumby wrote: post #84
thaumasiotes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So anyway the point is Berkeley has always done math the "reform" way and its math outcomes are much better in every respect. If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade, it's not getting even halfway decent results. If they're better than the results in San Francisco, all you can learn from that is that Berkeley has extreme problems with student quality, and quality is even lower…

> If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade High school in the US ends at 12th grade -- how do they teach physics without calculus?

You memorize the equations for position and velocity without learning how you can derive one from the other. In my school we took no calc physics sophomore year then senior had the option to take AP physics which finally introduced calc.

My high school offered more than most, I was able to take multi variable calculus which served me well in college.

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