California needs real math education, not gimmicks(noahpinion.blog)
noahpinion.blog
California needs real math education, not gimmicks
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/california-needs-real-math-education
363 comments
The actions that the California state education system towards Blacks and Brown kids are exactly what the most insidious racist person would do. If I hated Black and Brown kids, I would lower the education standards so low that these kids would graduate high school being unable to compete at the city, state or country level. And this is EXACTLY what is happening. Half of the Black kids in SF are graduating high school and can barely read.
Now with the gutting with math, Black and Brown kids will be even further behind on math than the rest of the demographics. It's horrifying.
Anyone who has money will avoid all this by either sending their kids to private school, which is what we did, or getting enrichment classes after school. Both of those options are unavailable to lower income kids, so the gap between the haves and the have nots will only increase at an exponential rate.
There is nothing more racist than the of lowered expectations in the guise of ruinous empathy for "the poor victims of white supremacy". You help undereducated kids by raising expectations, and pumping money into the system so that the student teacher ratio plummets in the poorest areas that need the most help. Instead SFUSD was spending millions to change the names of school instead of trying to get those kids to learn how to read.
Now with the gutting with math, Black and Brown kids will be even further behind on math than the rest of the demographics. It's horrifying.
Anyone who has money will avoid all this by either sending their kids to private school, which is what we did, or getting enrichment classes after school. Both of those options are unavailable to lower income kids, so the gap between the haves and the have nots will only increase at an exponential rate.
There is nothing more racist than the of lowered expectations in the guise of ruinous empathy for "the poor victims of white supremacy". You help undereducated kids by raising expectations, and pumping money into the system so that the student teacher ratio plummets in the poorest areas that need the most help. Instead SFUSD was spending millions to change the names of school instead of trying to get those kids to learn how to read.
I think we significantly overestimate how much school actually matters compared to family milieus. My wife and I highly value education, so regardless of when the school says children should learn algebra, I am already tutoring my 6 year old in basic algebra. If school did nothing other than be a daycare for my kids so we could work, they'd probably still be better educated than most kids going through public school because my wife and I will make sure of that because we teach our kids a lot on our own (and we're not hiring tutors or after school programs). If schools were more rigorous then it would save us time from having to do a lot of the educating ourselves, but it won't change family values.
California k-12 public education has become a joke. Even the top rated schools are succeeding from students going to after school tutoring and not from the education in the public institution.
It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class to wealthy.
I can only hope that in 5-10 years a new set of voters shift focus to education being a top priority.
It’s appalling how California cares more about homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and Medicare over education. Education is the single biggest factor to driving social mobility of the poor to middle class, and middle class to wealthy.
I can only hope that in 5-10 years a new set of voters shift focus to education being a top priority.
Like a lot of education, California's is so tied up in so many ways that it takes books to understand.
The first issue that springs to mind is the funding. Most funds in California do not stay local, they go to Sacramento and are then distributed out. If you're thinking that is a system ripe for abuse, then you are correct. The formulas and methods for determining funding aren't easy to grok. But then you add in all the fraud from schools themselves and you get a real mess.
Further, Prop 13's starvation of property taxes has also contributed to the lack of public school funding in California. It's a bit of a winding tale there, but suffice to say, less taxes means less good schools. Then again, Prop 13 is, just, hoo boy. What a total long standing mess.
So, does California need better education. Oh heck yes. But fixing that requires dealing with things like Prop 13 and other huge political monsters barely hidden under the rug. Try finding any politician with the bravery, let alone stamina, to fix those titanic underlying issues (pun intended).
The first issue that springs to mind is the funding. Most funds in California do not stay local, they go to Sacramento and are then distributed out. If you're thinking that is a system ripe for abuse, then you are correct. The formulas and methods for determining funding aren't easy to grok. But then you add in all the fraud from schools themselves and you get a real mess.
Further, Prop 13's starvation of property taxes has also contributed to the lack of public school funding in California. It's a bit of a winding tale there, but suffice to say, less taxes means less good schools. Then again, Prop 13 is, just, hoo boy. What a total long standing mess.
So, does California need better education. Oh heck yes. But fixing that requires dealing with things like Prop 13 and other huge political monsters barely hidden under the rug. Try finding any politician with the bravery, let alone stamina, to fix those titanic underlying issues (pun intended).
I feel like the facts are a little thin. It is not really true that "For decades, American math curriculum has followed a standard sequence: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, algebra II, precalculus and trigonometry, and calculus." That may have been the local condition in some places. The high school in my city does not have and has never had any named math course except calculus and statistics. Everything else is just "math". Common core math does not follow the given progression, either. 8th grade common core math has elements of algebra, geometry, and statistics and probability.
Data Science is a form of statistics. Algebra II is a pre-requisite for statistics. How is replacing a pre-requisite with a more advanced class is a good idea?
I went to high school in China, and the Math problems in the US from the same level are literal jokes to us. At the end of the semester, my teacher doesn't have anything else planned for the last class, so just for fun he would find these problems and share with the class :"Now let's look at what American students in your age are dealing with". I remember all of the problems are so dumb that the whole class would had a good laugh reading through them.
At that time I thought the whole Math education in the US is a joke, until I came here for graduate school and realized how brutally challenging the Math is in higher educations.
My 2 cents is that the majority demographics in the US don't give a damn about Math, or any kind of formal education. Most people, even the uneducated, are living a comfortable enough life, so there is no such thing for the next generation to dream of "changing their lives" by pursuing better education. As a result, these type of education are only reserved by the elite. While in a lot of developing countries, education is the only way for a normal people to not end up being extremely poor for the rest of his/her lives.
At that time I thought the whole Math education in the US is a joke, until I came here for graduate school and realized how brutally challenging the Math is in higher educations.
My 2 cents is that the majority demographics in the US don't give a damn about Math, or any kind of formal education. Most people, even the uneducated, are living a comfortable enough life, so there is no such thing for the next generation to dream of "changing their lives" by pursuing better education. As a result, these type of education are only reserved by the elite. While in a lot of developing countries, education is the only way for a normal people to not end up being extremely poor for the rest of his/her lives.
Well, "Yes Prime Minister" already figured it out. The whole education system is more for the welfare of bureaucracies and teachers/unions instead of students'. And that was some 40 years ago.
See also: A Mathematician’s Lament
by Paul Lockhart (2002): <https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....>
I can confidently say only 6 out of 16 years of math education (elementary through undergrad math degree) were "good". Contrarily for example, most science classes were good in my experience.
Math is down there with the worst average teachers. I learned more from YouTube than the textbook+teacher for some classes (Hello Professor Leonard anyone?). Without some YouTube professors I probably would have failed several classes.
My gripes: Most teachers suck, no one teaches you how to actually study math along the way, the word problems/applications need to stop being almost always about physics ffs, too many classes have inadequate or poor technology, the big picture concepts/threads are lost by most math teachers, and some textbooks are AWFUL, the eTextbook push has made some even worse (too many examples of why to list), and finally there needs to be sometime in those 16 years where foundations and philosophical issues are broached at least passingly.
The good math classes are amazing, and that's what kept me interested. But I just had to vent about the wasted potential. I'm not giving a nuanced opinion, I'm pointing out some glaring issues. Also if you get a teacher who says they regularly attend some national conference for math educators to structure their class, transfer out.
Math is down there with the worst average teachers. I learned more from YouTube than the textbook+teacher for some classes (Hello Professor Leonard anyone?). Without some YouTube professors I probably would have failed several classes.
My gripes: Most teachers suck, no one teaches you how to actually study math along the way, the word problems/applications need to stop being almost always about physics ffs, too many classes have inadequate or poor technology, the big picture concepts/threads are lost by most math teachers, and some textbooks are AWFUL, the eTextbook push has made some even worse (too many examples of why to list), and finally there needs to be sometime in those 16 years where foundations and philosophical issues are broached at least passingly.
The good math classes are amazing, and that's what kept me interested. But I just had to vent about the wasted potential. I'm not giving a nuanced opinion, I'm pointing out some glaring issues. Also if you get a teacher who says they regularly attend some national conference for math educators to structure their class, transfer out.
I think standardized tests are ideal. Make them very hard and don't be afraid to fail most of your students and have them repeat grades. Testing should not account for anything about a student other than physical disability needs.
The effects of these measures are seen decades after enactment. From what I have observed, the politicization of education and having metrics other than academic tests has gotten so bad, it should be discussed as a matter of national security. Relying on immigrants to fill in the gap and hoping they'll choose to remain in the US(despite societal hostility growing) is not a sustainable strategy.
This is the one area China, India and Russia can run circles around the US easily.
The effects of these measures are seen decades after enactment. From what I have observed, the politicization of education and having metrics other than academic tests has gotten so bad, it should be discussed as a matter of national security. Relying on immigrants to fill in the gap and hoping they'll choose to remain in the US(despite societal hostility growing) is not a sustainable strategy.
This is the one area China, India and Russia can run circles around the US easily.
For my school, kids taking algebra 1 in 9th grade were the remedial students. To force everyone into this track and pace… ugh.
The strangest thing to me is that American education professors wield power in setting educational standards, when their own field is completely allergic to any serious empirical work on what works. I guess to a state legislator a “professor of mathematics education” sounds like the kind of person who should know about these things?
California math standards resemble New York reading standards in their lack of engagement with studies of what works. There are too many examples like this. We would all be better off if education professors stayed completely out of the business of setting state standards.
California math standards resemble New York reading standards in their lack of engagement with studies of what works. There are too many examples like this. We would all be better off if education professors stayed completely out of the business of setting state standards.
This is incredibly sad.
What does Dr. Boaler have to gain from crippling math education?
Wow, this Boaler character is a piece of work [1][2].
[1] https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is...
[2] https://stanfordreview.org/boaler-professor/
[1] https://stanfordreview.org/review-investigation-jo-boaler-is...
[2] https://stanfordreview.org/boaler-professor/
algebra until highschool? some students can take it as early as 5th/6th grade. ludicrous.
The standard path is optimized for college admissions discrimination. It is prep for the SAT and calculus. What is not taught is effective problem solving. Instead we are basically teaching rote pattern matching. The proof of this claim is that chat gpt aces the SAT in math but fails on any advanced test like the IIT exams. Chat gpt even fails advanced AP English and literature exams. A place a priori you’d expect an LLM to do well.
Yes we should learn the chain rule and derivatives/slope but arguably developing statistical, mathematical and even computational reasoning/thinking is a better foundation.
Yes we should learn the chain rule and derivatives/slope but arguably developing statistical, mathematical and even computational reasoning/thinking is a better foundation.
U.S. high school math scores lag significantly behind other countries, even though scores in reading and science are above average
How much of this math gap is because other countries focus heavily on test prep and exam performance?
How much of this math gap is because other countries focus heavily on test prep and exam performance?
To people where math (to some higher level) is kind of okish, this seems bad. But in my experience, most people coming out of school ( and I'm 50+ so going back decades now) don't really have a useful working knowledge of mathematical ideas. For many they just end up hating it, instantly forgetting everything they learned through pain when they leave school, and never want anything to do with math again. I'm all for people trying new ideas to teach math, also changing the way we assess it. As long as there is a path that preserves "academic math"
California: one of the richest regions on Earth, with the highest taxes in the US, and math education worse than third-world countries.
I know of no better way to promote inequity than to gatekeep knowledge so that only those with abundant resources can access it.
I am just confronting this now. My daughter is 6, and I'm trying to teach her math and reading. She's excelling at reading. The thing about math is, I have to teach her math the way the standards specify. The problem is…
The common core math is just strange. I find it confusing, and I did a full tour at an engineering college.
Math is a “procedure”. That's why programs like MatLab/MathCad can solve equations-- they just have a set of rules that solve problems. Learning math is the process of internalizing these rules.
The common core stuff seems to be the opposite of this. I want to build with my daughter a set of skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, exponents etc, eventually moving on to trig, linear algebra and calc) she can build on. But common core hopelessly confuses even simple things like adition.
The common core math is just strange. I find it confusing, and I did a full tour at an engineering college.
Math is a “procedure”. That's why programs like MatLab/MathCad can solve equations-- they just have a set of rules that solve problems. Learning math is the process of internalizing these rules.
The common core stuff seems to be the opposite of this. I want to build with my daughter a set of skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, exponents etc, eventually moving on to trig, linear algebra and calc) she can build on. But common core hopelessly confuses even simple things like adition.
The problem is thinking that 5 or 10 or 20 people can decide what is good for millions of kids. Let parents work with teachers and schools to figure out what works for their kids.
The government should shut down all public funded schools. If some people need financial aid to ensure education, provide that aid directly in the form of money or school vouchers.
Schools will spring up with varied teaching philosophies and approaches. Parents can evaluate the available options and enroll their kids wherever they like.
Eventually the best approaches will win out, and even specialisations might emerge. Maybe everyone actually doesn't need to learn arithmetic. But others do. So they would choose the appropriate school and courses.
The government should shut down all public funded schools. If some people need financial aid to ensure education, provide that aid directly in the form of money or school vouchers.
Schools will spring up with varied teaching philosophies and approaches. Parents can evaluate the available options and enroll their kids wherever they like.
Eventually the best approaches will win out, and even specialisations might emerge. Maybe everyone actually doesn't need to learn arithmetic. But others do. So they would choose the appropriate school and courses.
I don't believe that "education resources" are lacking at all, if a student has access to the internet they have instant access to anything they would learn k-16. In terms of exercise, everybody has their own personal/public gym, with all the most advanced equipment (possibly interspersed with suboptimal equipment but an advanced personal gym nonetheless) that they do not use, because they either aren't athletes or don't care about exercise for health/spiritual fulfillment. Any work on making the gym better is wasted it isn't being used.
How can we solve this problem? Advertisement.
Perhaps instead of giving talks at conferences to people who couldn't care less about what you are saying and even if they did care they are "too busy" to engage with the ideas; you give talks to elementary schoolers instead. Elementary school, classrooms or auditoriums, or a monthly lecture series over the course of a year.
There aren't many other effective ways to show students that real people actually care about STEM, this one has the bonus of making use of the education of people who went from say EE to IT support, teachers cannot reasonably be expected to explain to children how electricity works better than that guy who lives a block down from you who has a stack of breadboards up to the ceiling, and just showing a video lacks the spontaneity needed to keep children engaged as you change focus.
What exactly is stopping you from repeating that talk you gave at strangeloop, rustconf, usenix, fosdem or gophercon to that school within walking distance? At the very least can you walk into the principal's office, look them dead in the eye; give them a firm handshake and tell them that you want to get involved with the kids' education.
How many STEM degrees holders are in California? A hundred thousand? How many elementary schools? <6,000. Even including middle and highschools the total is <10,000. The more people who participate the more it will show children that STEM is a real part of their life right now.
If you are a Californian, tell me how many STEM related talks, given by a community speaker, did you attend during your k-12 schooling? Now tell me how many times your teacher put on some random movie.
For me the answers are 0 and 100+
How can we solve this problem? Advertisement.
Perhaps instead of giving talks at conferences to people who couldn't care less about what you are saying and even if they did care they are "too busy" to engage with the ideas; you give talks to elementary schoolers instead. Elementary school, classrooms or auditoriums, or a monthly lecture series over the course of a year.
There aren't many other effective ways to show students that real people actually care about STEM, this one has the bonus of making use of the education of people who went from say EE to IT support, teachers cannot reasonably be expected to explain to children how electricity works better than that guy who lives a block down from you who has a stack of breadboards up to the ceiling, and just showing a video lacks the spontaneity needed to keep children engaged as you change focus.
What exactly is stopping you from repeating that talk you gave at strangeloop, rustconf, usenix, fosdem or gophercon to that school within walking distance? At the very least can you walk into the principal's office, look them dead in the eye; give them a firm handshake and tell them that you want to get involved with the kids' education.
How many STEM degrees holders are in California? A hundred thousand? How many elementary schools? <6,000. Even including middle and highschools the total is <10,000. The more people who participate the more it will show children that STEM is a real part of their life right now.
If you are a Californian, tell me how many STEM related talks, given by a community speaker, did you attend during your k-12 schooling? Now tell me how many times your teacher put on some random movie.
For me the answers are 0 and 100+
It really just looks like another form of the Reagan economics of 'starve the beast' in the end.
Kill the public education. Enrich the privatized education. How ironic
Kill the public education. Enrich the privatized education. How ironic
Education interventions are historically some of the least effective endeavors of any public works project.
Countless attempts to spend beacoup bucks to bridge racial gaps in educational attainment and IQ have been made and none have ever worked.
Given the bet available evidence, not much education is necessary to bring out the potential of a population in terms of attainment and IQ scoring.
Countless attempts to spend beacoup bucks to bridge racial gaps in educational attainment and IQ have been made and none have ever worked.
Given the bet available evidence, not much education is necessary to bring out the potential of a population in terms of attainment and IQ scoring.
The California educational public system is made to hamstring those that need it in order to prop up those that don’t.
Great article! Though the author despises phrases like Woke Math, his description of the failings of the California Math Framework is exactly what critics are referring to when using phrases like Woke Math.
It's all so tiresome.
The pervasive failure of these institutions to meet their stated objectives isn't an isolated phenomenon. It's symptomatic of a larger, systemic problem – the widespread presence of perverse and misaligned incentives at all levels within large organizations.
Unless we find a way to counteract this, attempts at reform will merely catalyze further expansion and complexity. The uncomfortable truth is, once an organization surpasses a certain size, it seems to take on a 'life of its own', gradually sacrificing its original mission to prioritize self-preservation and expansion. Who has ever seen an organization like this voluntarily reform itself? I certainly haven't.