Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments SF no longer offering Algebra 1 in middle school

We don't live in San Francisco, but I was reading that the SF public schools no longer Algebra I in middle school! You start that in 9th grade. My child in public school and different city took Algebra I in 7th grade. It's not called that anymore due to Common Core, but he got a 96% all year in it.
He takes accelerated math classes in the summer at the community college, which helps a lot. I think it's really sad though that their public school district is doing that.

I see that this situation is bad, but think the problem goes far deeper. I also wonder if SF is delaying algebra because CC math isn't giving kids what they need to understand it. I mean, not that what came immediately before CC was so great, but....

My son was in CC 8th grade math this past academic year. Everything was fine until the end of the first semester, when it jumped from stuff that made sense to solving systems of linear equations. The course hadn't gone over graphing a single linear equation yet, and he was justifiably confused.

When I talked to him, he said he'd gone over some of "that stuff" in 7th grade, but "I didn't understand it then, either." He would have struggled with algebra had he continued with that course (the school let him switch to an old pre-algebra book).

I wrote to one of the CC authors after learning that other kids (some described here) were hitting the same roadblock. I said that I admired what the CC was trying to accomplish, and asked if this particular part of CC math was problematic. The response was that "it would take me an entire day to explain it to you" because I obviously didn't understand linear equations. Emm. Okay. He reminded me of what the Everyday Math advocates said to the STEM folks who questioned EM's approach to arithmetic: "You obviously don't understand this stuff."

So okay, fine. The CC is under fire and this guy was circling his wagons. Might make him feel better, but won't help the situation.

I feel very sad when I think that many kids in this country are being cheated out of a decent education because of fads (compounded with textbook company profiteering). Though to be fair to Pearson (!), what should we expect when the gentlemen in charge of CC math wrote up a list of bullet points standards and expected that the textbook producers would be able to turn them into pedagogical gold?

Val, kudos to you for going right to the source! The response you received was interesting, though, because here's an article I read a while back about another author of CC math, who is also the father of elementary students. Based on the answer you received, I'm assuming it's not the same person, because the guy in this article tutors his kids because of poor CC math implementation.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/12/29/371918272/the-man-behind-common-core-math

You're right. I wrote to a guy who wasn't one of the three main authors, but was in the next group of (7 or 8 people). I had communicated with him before and had received very positive responses. Oh well.

The CC authors all have excellent math credentials. The guy I contacted also knew how bad the textbook publishers are and had published on the subject. It kind of surprised me that they were that naive about textbook publishing (as Jason Zimba admitted in that NPR article).