California is going to require that all students take algebra I in 8th grade soon. It's a ridiculous idea; 56% of them take it now and a woefully low percentage manage to pass. I have to get the kids in a few minutes and so can't find the number now, but will look later.
The problem is that the maths courses in 3rd - 7th don't create students who can work with numbers. They emphasize memorization at the one extreme and the conceptual stuff we've been discussing here, and very little middle ground. Of course, this approach falls to pieces in algebra, which is easy if you have a solid grounding in the basics and very difficult to impossible if you don't.
I remember doing multiplication in 3rd grade, long division in 4th grade and fraction manipulations in 5th. Each topic was previewed the year before. My son's 2nd grade class was still doing basic addition last November. <sigh>
Val
