‘An important goal of this framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics “talent” and “giftedness” with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway. There is no cutoff determining when one child is “gifted” and another is not.’
Most abilities occur within a population as a Gaussian or log Gaussian distribution and I agree that arbitrary cutoffs are inappropriate, but so is the attempt to apply a one size fits all curriculum based on age determined enrolled grade.
The framework prescribes heterogeneous grouping so all students (of similar age) can contribute, but abilities can vary so widely in such groups that the progress of individuals in both tails of the distribution could be hindered. I remember my son used to do the same multiplication worksheets as his similar aged Yr 2 classmates (7-8 yr olds), but he would do his in other number systems (which the teacher was happy for him to do as the school was aware that he had mastered the multiplication table in kindergarten). When he first used Roman numerals and binary, the teacher was happy for him to show his work to classmates, but when he decided to do his worksheets in different bases (after recognising that other species were tetradactyl and tridactyl etc) and started inventing symbols for polydactyls with more than five digits per limb, he was specifically told by his teacher NOT to share his ideas with his classmates as these concepts would confuse those who were struggling to master multiplication in our base ten system (it was exactly the sort of applied maths concepts this framework seeks to encourage, but the education system still needs to also recognise that individuals do develop at vastly different rates).
Eventually, my son was radically accelerated in maths and has been an asset at his high school for the past four years, with the head teacher praising him for his contributions to teaching because his older ‘peers’ were actually ready to share ideas introduced by my son, but the California’s draft framework doesn’t really reveal how students like my son (& it’s clear that many who post in this forum would face similar situations) would fit into their proposed new system.
