The California State Board of Education issued a new math teaching framework on July 12 based on what it calls “updated principles of focus, coherence and rigor.” The word “updated” is certainly accurate. Not so much ‘principles’, ‘focus’, ‘coherence’ or ‘rigor’. California’s new approach to math is as unfair as it is frivolous.
The framework is voluntary, but it will greatly impact school districts and teachers around the Golden State. Developed over the past four years, it contains nearly 1,000 pages. Among the titles of its 14 chapters are “Teaching for Equity and Engagement,” “Structuring School Experiences for Equity and Engagement,” and “Supporting Educators in Offering Equitable and Engaging Mathematics Learning.” The guidelines call for math teachers to be “engaged in social justice work” to “equip students with a set of tools and mindsets to identify and challenge inequities with math” — not the ability to do math. It is far more important to teach students that “mathematics plays a role in the structures of power and privilege that exist in our society.”
California education bureaucrats are seeking to reinvent math as the study of grievances. “Big ideas are central to learning mathematics,” the framework insists, but the only big idea the paper promotes is that unequal outcomes in maths are evidence of a racist society. The framework recommends that Algebra I not be taught in middle school, which would force the course to be taught in high school. But if all students take algebra as freshmen, there won’t be time to fit calculus into a four-year high school curriculum. And this is the goal: the difference between the best and worst students in mathematics will become less visible… link</ a>
What profound social change underlies the war on math? – Evolution News
Evolution News
Citing a recent article in the journal Urban Education focused on “healing
practices through the use of mathematics for social justice,” education …
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California’s New Math Framework Has Powerful Potential to Close Student
Knowledge Gaps
EdSource
Most of the ink spilled over the new California Math Framework has
focused on two debates that have been ongoing in K-12 education for decades:
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