Andrew Rotherham fears that Virginia’s new math pathways will erode equity instead of advancing it.
It’s hard to argue with helping more students see themselves in math and as math users. And the idea that students need math to sort through information and misinformation they are bombarded by is something I think is pretty on point. Plus, there is an argument that we should rethink math. Thinking about different ways to sequence content makes a lot of sense.
But, Rotherham writes, “this approach opens the door to further walk back rigor and increase in the opacity of what’s being taught.” Also, “it’s going to freak out parents.”
Virginia’s efforts to address significant achievement gaps “mostly focus on public relations,” he writes. “Republicans are basically AWOL on the issue, Dems won’t cross adult special interests.”
Look, if you want more kids to be able to access math, see themselves as math people, take advanced classes then move that 8th-grade (proficiency) number in the right direction. Dramatically. Those are kids the school system has had, most of them, since kindergarten – more than eight years. And there are plenty of schools that show it can be done. That’s equity – giving kids what they need to succeed. Instead, we’re going to argue about whether or not calculus is exclusionary. Of course it is if you’re shutting the door to it for kids before they’re even out of middle school.
. . . At the end of the day you either believe that as a general matter all kids – across income, race, ethnicity – can achieve if given access to good teachers with high expectations, adequately resourced schools, and a system that expects results as a matter of course not as an exception or you don’t. If you do then you fight to make sure those conditions exist. If you don’t then you fight to change the yardsticks, the rules of the game, and all that. This is about yardsticks.
Rotherham thinks yardstick-moving will give “equity” a bad name.
California teachers will “teach toward social justice” in math class if the state’s new mathematics framework is approved, writes Chrissy Clark on Daily Wire.
There’s advice on fifth-grade word problems:
When students are learning about statistics and data sets, teachers should ask questions such as, “Who attends your school? Which racial and gender groups are represented? And how does your school data compare to state or national data?”
Teachers also are told to discuss gender stereotypes in word problems.
“One student asks, ‘Are there word problems that have a male knitting a scarf, cooking, and cleaning?’ and another ponders, ‘Does the textbook always use girl names for girl stuff and boy names for boy stuff?’ The teacher asks the students, ‘Why does this matter? Who does this privilege? Who is silenced?’”
The framework has “vignettes” in which students are “excited” by talking with diverse classmates about different ways to solve problems. Let’s have a “number talk” about 18 x 5? Would real students be so excited? It’s nice to think so.