SF: Algebra is officially on The City's March ballot

[pnwmom]

87. 1. Tests are imperfect, but they're not useless. We don't want lifeguards to guard a pool

unless they've passed a test. We don't want drivers on the road unless they've passed a test. We don't want a paramedic in an ambulance who hasn't passed a test. In real life, people are expected to take and pass imperfect tests every day. School is part of real life.

2. Yes, there is a lot of math. What should be taught in 7 - 12th grades? Before proposing a massive change to its math curriculum, the state of CA should at least have consulted college, university, and technical school faculty to find out what skills and mathematical knowledge students need in order to enter their programs. This they failed to do. If they had asked for input from UC Berkeley, or UCLA, or Stanford (in the quantitative fields, not the department of education), they would have quickly learned of the flaws in the plan to drop Algebra as a middle school option and to encourage students in high school to substitute two years of data literacy for Algebra 2 and precalculus.

Since the reformers' stated goal was to increase opportunities for disadvantaged students in technical fields, the best way to do that would to help these students become more prepared for college, not less. Having to take remedial math classes in college increases both the cost of college and the time spent.

3. Mathematical pipe dreams aside, the State of CA was considering a particular set of changes to its math curriculum, which was deeply flawed. Professor Brian Conrad, in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford, is one of the few people on the planet who poured through all 900 pages of the proposed California Math Program. You can read his comments at the link below.

The Executive Summary of his public comment #2 begins:

The current draft of the CMF is a 900+ page document that is the outcome of an 11-month revision by a 5-person writing team supervised by a 20-person oversight team. As a hefty document with a large number of citations, it gives the impression of being a well-researched and evidence-based proposal. Unfortunately, this impression is incorrect.

I read the entire CMF, as well as many of the papers cited within it. The CMF contains false or misleading descriptions of many citations from the literature in neuroscience, acceleration, de-tracking, assessments, and more. (I consulted with three experts in neuroscience about the papers in that field which seemed to be used in the CMF in a concerning way.) Sometimes the original papers arrive at conclusions opposite those claimed in the CMF.

Just to be clear: I am not questioning the value or correctness of any of the cited papers. Rather, I am pointing out how such papers are invoked in the CMF for conclusions far-removed from the papers themselves.

https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/#h.ns5n6hdqa4x8