San Francisco's decision to delay Algebra for all students until the 9th grade in the name of "equity," is a really bad one. Black parents didn't ask for this, and this strategy won't achieve the equity that they're looking for.
Hard to accept: A lot of "anti-woke" people believe that being woke is all just a lot of bad decisions like this. This belief is due to framing by the far-right: any bad policy is "woke." I help them understand that Black families don't want this and didn't ask for it.
@mekkaokereke I don't understand what part of "lets get rid of advanced programs because not all students are advanced and there is inequity in that advancement.
If they had special school, maybe after school or in the summer specifically for students in key areas to GET advanced they might just have a little better luck. Algebra is a good start. They might even throw some study skills in there since it is shown that those skills are the biggest problem for kids from disadvantaged homes.
The "there's inequity in *advanced* classes" argument does have merit.
Black kids are often misidentified as "not gifted" and white kids are often misidentified as "gifted." And then gifted kids get better resources, more attention, better classes, smaller class sizes, that makes the gifted label a self fulfilling prophecy.
The solve for that may not be "No gifted programs for anyone!" It may again be "Reduce the racism."
Similar arguments are for sexism / non neurotypicals.
On gender and tracking:
A not-rich little white 1st grade girl that has undiagnosed bad eyesight, is more likely than a rich white boy, to be mislabelled as "not good at math" and put on the slower education track.
She finally gets her diagnosis and her glasses in the 5th grade, but by then it's too late. She fights to make up ground to get into her dream college, then says things like, "I majored in Chemistry at Cornell, which was hard because I have never been good at math!" 😢
@mekkaokereke In undergrad I tutored math and was wildly popular among women. I learned to ask in the 1st or 2nd session "OK, who was it who made you believe you were bad at math?"
Every. Single. Student could, and did name names.
Same, except I tutored football players. They would need help with Calculus or Linear Algebra, but I would start them literally at arithmetic. Not kidding. Then I would test their knowledge and walk up until I found the exact place that their understanding went from "complete mastery" to "some gaps." This was often around algebra, pre-calc, or geometry. Then I would fill in that pothole, and everything else would snap into place!
It felt like this:
https://youtu.be/jChiI15Iwa4
The fall off from "complete knowledge" to "some gaps" usually coincided with a significant life event that was not directly related to academics. Eg, loss of a parent, divorce, a teacher who really didn't like them, etc.
@mekkaokereke @longobord This. When I was in high school I became very ill (life threatening style) and I was too busy fighting for my life to really, really engage with my Geometry class. Everyone in my family (outside my parents who knew what was up) simply thought I was bad at geometry.
But!
There are also a lot of teachers who absolutely suck at the most basic instructions of math/science and then won't take any questions at this time.🤔
@mekkaokereke @longobord
When my brother was a math PhD student, he tutored undergrads, and his stories sound a lot like yours.
In one tutoring session, there was increasing mutual confusion until he finally wrote out:
x + y = y + x
…and the student said, “Why did nobody tell me this?!?”
Years of mechanical computation — learn process, repeat 50x — had left this student without the most basic mathematical intuitions. (Probably compounded by abusive teaching.) Of course they were lost.
@inthehands @mekkaokereke @longobord
Yeah. Black High school student "My math teacher said I'm more of a 'words' person."
A couple weeks later, after my music class pretty explicitly became a math class "I think I'm starting to get this math stuff"
Yeah. You just needed a teacher who wasn't giving up on you preemptively.
@inthehands @mekkaokereke @longobord
Thinking about it more, I think that what sticks with me most about this anecdote is that–when a student experiences difficulty–teachers are more quick to assume that that struggle is intrinsic when they are black or female. That teacher went directly to "There is something about you that is just fundamentally bad at math." and no one called them on it.
@griotspeak Music is math in a different form. You can’t perform most music until you learn how to count. So is walking, talking, and most physical activity. Writing prose or poetry involves math.
Don’t let people tell you you can’t do math. You do math every day without even thinking about it. The problem is in how we TEACH math.
@inthehands @mekkaokereke @longobord I’ve been pretty impressed with the Common Core curriculum used by several states at the elementary school level
Less focus on rote tasks, heavy focus on number theory. My (Berkeley) 8th graders has been doing algebra this year (mostly in the form of functions), but I don’t think they call it “algebra"
Biases:
1. I skipped 8th grade math to do Algebra in 8th grade
2. My son skipped 7th grade math to do Algebra in 7th grade
3. I have a BS in Math
My recommendation would have bored the hell out of me given the quality of schools I came from and my parents' lack of ability to get me outside tutoring, but it also probably would have benefitted many classmates I know that got As in Algebra bc they only memorized procedures
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