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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

#141

Post by 0000011111 »

Why can we do both?

1. Make it possible for HS students who are interested in Calculus to take the course under the instruction from a college profess on the high school campus. That way it would be set up for students to get college credit for the class and they would not need to travel to a college campus or deal with the AP exam system.

2. Make it possible for HS students who are not interested (Yet) or at all to graduate with out taking the class. Lots of student are ready for Calculus until college anyway. No need to force them on a single path IMO.

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

#142

Post by jeffbee »

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.

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.

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

#143

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

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…

Magnet schools benefit the individual student but they are a bit problematic for many schools because they pick off the highest performers and whoever is willing to do the work to get admitted / physically drive to the magnet.

And then the home school quality goes down and that hurts everyone else who isn't among the small group at the magnet.

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

#144

Post by scarmig »

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.

The point isn't that every single student should take calculus. The goal is to make it so different students can choose the path that's best for them. California's proposed changes make it much tougher for students to take calculus in 12th grade, let alone earlier.

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

#145

Post by apetresc »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #31
jimbob45 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but what if American children were subjected to the standards of Chinese schools? You'd see 70% failure rates overnight at every school in the nation. Surely, in that case, we'd see policies like these pushed even by white people. Likewise, the minority parents and schools simply see upper-class white schools in this country as we do the Chinese schools. I'm not saying that this is the best solution to the probl…

We're not talking about abruptly changing standards, we're talking about holding kids to existing standards for which our society is already calibrated. I don't think your analogy applies (also, are Chinese schools really so much more rigorous than American schools, or is this assumed based on performance of Chinese immigrants?).

Yes, they really are. Look up example questions for the Zhongkao (national high school entrance exam) or Gaokao (national university entrance exam) and ask yourself how North American students at those respective stages would fare.

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

#146

Post by akomtu »

eggsmediumrare wrote: post #92
n4r9 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether you are born with a high IQ is purely random, and even worse IQ is heritable This sounds contradictory to me. Moreover, how does IQ differ in this respect from "capacity and willingness to do hard work"?

Who you are born as is random, but who will have children with higher IQ is not. Work ethic is less nature and more nurture than IQ, or at least feels that way intuitively.

> Who you are born as is random.

The essense of materialistic nihilism.

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

#147

Post by s1artibartfast »

legalcorrection wrote: post #65
daveslash wrote: post #10

Sorry for being out of the loop and asking a (possibly) dumb question: What is the stated reason that the CMF suggested these changes? Is it about budgets? Is it because some people might think these classes " aren't that important? ". The open letter seems to suggest that it's about closing gaps between privileged and less privileged - is that it? Honest question - I'm not trying to stir the pot.

Quoted post unavailable.

This is actual argument that I saw presented as well, just in different words eg reduce racial disparity in outcome.

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

#148

Post by HelloMcFly »

twofornone wrote: post #126
vkou wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like more woke nonsense You are right that this is a lot of nonsense. Specifically, 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is the nonsense meme that gets hammered into student heads so frequently during school that most of them actually start to believe it. It's not some kind of novel woke nonsense, though, it's how math instruction on this continent has been happening over the past X decades. The wokies are…

>You are right that this is a lot of nonsense. Specifically, 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is the nonsense meme that gets hammered into student heads so frequently during school that most of them actually start to believe it. No, the nonsense is the idea that we are all cut out for math. That's the fundamental underpinning behind the "wokies" push for equity, a silent conflation of equality of opportunity wi…

> No, the nonsense is the idea that we are all cut out for math.

I think the nonsense is making a decision about who is and isn't cut-out for math at such a young age, and keeping them hemmed into that path for the duration of their education. That's not merely recognizing the top, middle, and bottom - it's creating it.

I see that as a worthy thing to try to avoid. I also think we should strive to avoid falsely concluding that all persons are equally capable.

But every decision is one that creates tradeoffs. I don't know what should be done. I'm an observer on this topic, and I think there's a lot of hubris in this thread from others oh so certain they know what's best.

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

#149

Post by taeric »

kurthr wrote: post #140
taeric wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Why is calculus a goal?

Because, without it you will be at a great disadvantage in entering any STEM undergraduate program in the US.

I'll agree that any stem targeted students should get exposure. Not clear that it helps most students.

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

#150

Post by l33t2328 »

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.

But statistical literacy doesn’t.

Sure, they may not be able to tell you what is a measurable function, but they can explain the way you should feel about a p-value.

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