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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Here's a revolutionary idea that pretty much all of the world adopts, if students are having trouble with a topic, get them to do more of it, instead of running away from it.

I always find it hilarious that the pre college education in US is so messed up. Instead of doing Algebra 1, Algebra 2, calculus, geometry as one subject that you do in a year and then completely forgetting about it till the next time you have to do it, how about you do a little bit of everything every year from grade 8-12. Problem solved.

For e.g. in India you learn geometry, algebra, etc. every year from grade 6 to grade 12. i.e. You have a single subject called "Math" that teaches grade appropriate concepts in all the topics in math. Trains the mind gradually over 7 years instead of one big dump. In undergrad in USA, I cruised through most of my freshmen math classes because I had learnt most of it in high school.

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This policy has nothing to do with the topic of algebra. This is code for advanced math, because algebra is typically considered advanced for < 9th grade children. Since the organizations feel ashamed that they're failing certain demographics as evidenced by being under-represented in the advanced classes, they're just scrapping the advanced classes for everyone. Truly disgraceful

> This policy has nothing to do with the topic of algebra. This is code for advanced math, because algebra is typically considered advanced for < 9th grade children.

I sincerely hope you're not serious about this. I took algebra in 7th grade and I was considered a remedial student with habitually poor grades. If you're telling me I was actually 2 years advanced by present standards, then the situation in California must be deteriorating severely.

For reference, this was in an underfunded rural American public school. I was 12.

I don't know what to tell you. That's the state of the country. But hey, at least they're honest about why they're doing it:

> San Francisco pioneered key aspects of the new approach, opting in 2014 to delay algebra instruction until 9th grade and to push advanced mathematics courses until at least after 10th grade as a means of promoting equity.

The school failed the most vulnerable children by objective measures, so they're just trying to get rid of those measures entirely.

Yep it seems like the "equitable" solution to failing children is to simply redefine success.

Really, truly worrying that instead of focusing resources to help kids improve and overcome a challenge the answer is to remove the challenge instead.

When commenting on the state of the country, I would look towards the states that have historically ranked poorly in education and see why they’re never improving. California is definitely not one of those states & seems to have no issue in keeping a higher than average educated populace.

From the article:

On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.

Looking at derivatives would make the danger these policies present to California students clear.

When I was in 5th grade, I was put into the advanced math class. We graphed equations, learned y=mx+b, slopes, etc. All the basic concepts that are introduced in Algebra 1.

When I was in 7th grade, we were taught "what a negative number is." That entire year was a complete and utter waste. But fortunately, 8th grade offered Algebra where I could get back on track.

This was 30 years ago, in California. Public school math standards are a joke here, and apparently getting even worse.

For another data point, I took it in 7th grade too, that was only--oh god 2003 was nearly 20 years ago. Anyway, it was considered one year early for my public school district in Utah. Me and a few others in my 6th grade class who had good math grades were offered the chance to sign up for it early if we were able to pass a test administered by the junior high. I don't remember what the test had on it, I do remember asking people around me (at least parents and GED-holding brother) "What is algebra anyway?" and not receiving an answer, but somehow I passed. One friend also passed but didn't sign up, instead doing "pre-algebra" like most kids, which made me sad. (I'd guess the test had things like "if x + 3 = 10, multiple choice what is x?" as sort of a sink-or-swim filter, or maybe just some more advanced examples of whatever the 6th grade curriculum entailed.)

Ditto, 7th grade in Colorado. Yeah, they called it advanced, but they called everything advanced. You know the drill: grade school math is always "advanced," grad school math is always "introductory."

True that. I finally learned some basic algebra in grad school. I also learned just how far from advanced I really was.

I took algebra in 7th grade as well, but it was considered advanced by 2 years. It was normal to take algebra in 9th grade. I went to an okay high school in a medium sized city in Michigan. That was about 20 years ago.

> then the situation in California must be deteriorating severely.

Hmm…

Worlds 5th largest GDP, internationally desirable cities, some of the highest housing prices that’s always being bought over asking price, often in cash - internationally acclaimed state wide university system, one of the cultural & academic centers of the nation…

I know it’s like, my opinion, but I think the situation in California is fine. I’d look towards the states that have ranked last & near last in education for decades without any movement in a better direction before commenting on California.

Even more, for those who do well enough in k-12 in those dead last states… well, they brain drain to greener pastures. Like California.

How many of the employees in these companies that make the GDP so high were born, raised, and educated in California?

You know damned well that it's not many. California is a success because of immigrants from other countries and states. Think about the founders of the current top valuation tech companies in California. How many were raised in California? Zuck? Nope. Maryland. Sergey Brin? Nope, educated in Maryland as well. Larry Page? Nope, raised and educated in Michigan. Steve Jobs was educated in California, 60 years ago, so you've got that. Not relevant to this conversation. What about his successor Tim Cook? Oops, he was raised and educated in Alabama. Reed Hastings? Nope, raised and educated in Boston.

So while the above proves your final point, it basically highlights the fact that California does well for structural and historical reasons, like the fact that many VCs required any company they invested in to relocate to the Valley, and other things like network effects.

Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Ben Horowitz (a16z), and many more. While you have some point, the Bay Area only raises so many kids while it's economic engine is unprecedented in attracting intelligent folks from around the world.

Argentina used to be one of the richest countries in the world. Things looked fine there too, until they longer were.

I attended underfunded rural public schools as well. The funding of a school district will often correlate with student performance, but in most subjects, it's not a causal link.

Kids with families who value education do better. Kids with parents who punish them if they don't do their homework do better.

When you isolate for income, there are large discrepancies in success between various cultural groups. Appalachian whites (my family) don't do well compared to many groups of the same income. The culture doesn't prize education, and even views it as being effeminate or "selling out". But that's only a small piece. A big piece of it is that parents don't give a shit about their kid's success in school, and that is very big in certain cultures.

My wife is the daughter of Filipino immigrants, and from the day my son started 1st grade, if he doesn't get all As, the attitude is that he has failed. At one point, I was going to argue with her, but I looked at my siblings, and my cousins (primarily white trash losers), and then looked at her family's success, and decided that she knew something I didn't.

My son has a TV and an Xbox in his room. The controllers and remotes are all kept locked away in my closet. If he doesn't get straight A's on his report card, all of it stays locked in my closet, even on weekends. We did this in the Fall of 2020 when he got all A's and a B+ in one class. He went all of the spring semester with no access to his TV or video games. He got them back in the summer after getting straight A's on his report card. (He's a 10th grader now). Contrast this with my poor, white working class siblings and how they raise their sons. My sister frequently complains about how bad her son's grades are (he's the same age as my son) and throws her hands in the air as if she's unable to do anything about it. He has multiple game systems in his room, and the last time I visited, when I woke up to take a piss, his light was on and he was playing games at 3 AM. This was a day after she had complained about his low C average. She coddles him, has low expectations for him, and ignores her own obvious parenting failures. She's a great representation for why so many American public schools are filled with thoroughly mediocre students.

If you have kids, get the fucking electronics out of their hands. If they aren't bored and regularly bugging you about being bored, it's probably because they are being entertained by their smartphones or video games, and you are fucking up as a parent.

Look at Nigerian American parents, or Asian American parents. Instead of doing what my redneck sister and many others do, and rationalizing the obvious differences by assuming that "they are too strict and are raising maladjusted nerds", imitate them. They will happily share their parenting strategies with you, and rule number one is that they aren't their kid's friends. They don't give a shit if their kids like them NOW. They care if their kids will like them when they are winning as adults.

Far too many successful people I meet complain about their parents being too hard on them, never stopping to look around at their current success and realizing that their parents made it possible.

You make some interesting points, but children are neither machines nor lab rats. Conditioning can have deep psychological effects; those successful people that complain about their parents might have done some introspection and arrived to a different conclusion from yours. Professional success unfortunately does not equal happiness.

Did you take standard high-school Algebra 1 in 7th grade? Algebraic concepts are often taught as early as 3rd grade, but much of it is considered pre-Algebra.

> standard high-school Algebra

I didn't take Algebra in highschool, so.. maybe? 5th and 6th grade were called Pre-Algebra. 7th and 8th were Algebra. 9th was Geometry, 10th was Trig, and 11th and 12th were Calc.

How old is a 9th grade student in the US? My cohort started Algebra in year 7 in Australia, which is 12/13 years old. And similar to GP's proposal, we learn age appropriate topics every single year, every single week.

Grade nine is 14-15 years of age in the US.

I agree with you WRT age appropriate-ness. Just because something can or has been introduced at a certain age does not mean that is optimal. I recall a study I saw recently that showed delaying introducing one subject - it may have been math - to very young students had negligible impacts on their scores (compared to students who were introduced earlier) a few years later. The students with a delayed introduction caught up so quickly that the delay didn’t matter. I’ll see if I can dig up a link - EDIT, I’m struggling to find it under all of the COVID-related student-delay-catch-up articles.

> The students with a delayed introduction caught up so quickly that the delay didn’t matter

Yes and there are some kids that act up or learn to hate education and the system for being forced into what amounts to remedial classes. Sometimes the brightest children are the most difficult precisely because they're not being challenged.

The ideal would be to have every student learn at their own pace. Some children could comprehend algebra in 8th grade, others may never fully comprehend it.

Obviously that's impossible at scale. So the best we can do is to separate kids based on ability and interest. Some children can grasp more advanced concepts at an earlier age, while others struggle. That's why generally in schools we have standard classes, special education and gifted classes. The best schools separate it even further offering additional lessons or tutoring to children that are especially curious or require more work.

Everyone benefits. This is common sense.

There's no such thing as "appropriate topics" for an age. It's all child specific.

Gifted programs do very little or nothing as far as most studies can tell. Any gains in scores are very small, and they don’t appear to make any meaningful difference in student engagement or motivation.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/01623737211008919

https://www.nber.org/papers/w17089

These programs are relatively expensive, and there’s a strong argument the gifted programs should be overhauled, or that the money could be better spent elsewhere.

> Gifted programs do very little or nothing as far as most studies can tell. Any gains in scores are very small, and they don’t appear to make any meaningful difference in student engagement or motivation.

I really don't need a study telling me my child won't benefit from a gifted program. It's a parent's right to decide for themselves. I personally know many people that have benefitted and it made their childhood bearable.

> I personally know many people that have benefitted and it made their childhood bearable.

Barring a time machine or the discovery of a way to skip across a multiverse, this is an assertion without much of a control group.

That’s why we need studies.

Gifted programs aren't the same thing as tracking kids into more advanced math classes. A gifted program is where you take some kids aside and teach them some random extra stuff, at the end of the day they're still in the regular classes with the other kids also and don't really have a chance to go any faster.

> Gifted programs aren't the same thing as tracking kids into more advanced math classes

In elementary school gifted programs are often tracking people into advanced math, reading, and other subjects all at once. Plus teaching them extra stuff.

At higher grades, if it exists at all, its often tracking them into a different school that has both more advanced and more diverse classes.

> A gifted program is where you take some kids aside and teach them some random extra stuff, at the end of the day they're still in the regular classes with the other kids also and don't really have a chance to go any faster.

I’ve heard of lots of different gifted programs, and most don't fit that description.

My kid's school did exactly this for "gifted" elementary school kids. What saved him was being in split grade classes in 2nd and 3rd grades where he could move to the older student's side of the room for math and reading instruction. Eventually, he skipped 4th grade altogether and ended up with the peer group he was already spending much of his day with.

In middle school, the gifted kids got to go on one special field trip each year. By HS, there was a gifted program in name only. We paid someone to run the "gifted" program but I have no idea what she actually did. She wasn't even available to assist in college apps and there weren't any special programs that I ever saw. My kid, and his most motivated peers, all ended up at very good universities in spite of the lack of support from the school.

Those are modern cut rate gifted programs.

The 90s had gifted programs where students who tested well got placed into a separate cohort for core classes (English, History, Math) in Middle and High School, or were in a dedicated classroom for elementary school.

I was in a program in the 90s which consisted solely of sending the smarter kids out of the classroom periodically to work on logic puzzles with each other.

The only educational purpose served was getting them out of the classroom so that more attention could be given to the dumber kids.

As someone who went through a gifted program, I seriously question the validity of any such study.

So much more was expected of us, that of course we came out learning more. 8th grade was a 20 page research project. 6th grade math was algebra, in 7th grade we learned logarithms and binary math.

When I went back to mainstream academics in high school, the difference was stark. In one of my city's top schools, students were still reading books out loud during class. Expected reading assignments were around a couple dozen pages a week. Math was all repeating what I had learned in middle school. Essays were a fraction the length and difficulty.

And in high school I knew plenty of smart kids who were bored to tears and misbehaved. Hell I watched one kid in Latin class piece his own nipple. (The teacher did nothing, possibly because said student was also pretty darn good at Latin...)

I wonder how a study is going to account for "smart kids who dropped out of school from sheer boredom".

Another aspect to examine is that behavior problems in gifted programs were, IMHO, much less than in mainstream classrooms. When all the students in the classroom are there to learn, no big surprise, learning gets done. Students turn in HW on time, listen when the teacher talks, and have expectations of not only themselves, but of each other.

Yes, gifted programs need to be accessible across socio-economic levels. The fact that I had to be bused to the rich part of town to go to a gifted program is a great example of classist and racist policies in action.

> while being fairly expensive.

I fail to see how gifted programs cost any more than regular programs. You are literally taking the highest achievers and placing them in a separate classroom for a few core subjects. For middle school and high school, there are no additional teachers, no additional programs in place, it is purely a cohort.

> and they don’t appear to make any meaningful difference in student engagement or motivation.

As someone from a poor working class family, gifted programs gave me the opportunity to rise up out of generations of being poor.

Gifted programs need to be made available to everyone who qualifies.

The fact is, one college graduate can help elevate an entire family. Every student needs to be given the chance to reach their full potential, and for some, that means placing them in an environment which has an expectation of academic excellence and lifelong achievement.

Edit: I just reviewed the study my local school district did to justify shutting down their spectrum program. None of the reasons (!!!) had to do with student outcomes.

Look at the first of the linked studies - it’s quite large (national across the USA and uses both between school and between student analyses), so I’m not sure what would make it completely invalid. As you asked, it does also look at student absence rates and engagement, and saw no significant differences - so “boredom prevention” doesn’t seem to typically be a working feature either.

I would suggest that your experiences may not have been the norm. Anecdotally - I was also in a gifted program, and it was essentially a waste of the school’s money. We had an designated educator for the gifted program, and we mostly did things that were interesting… but didn’t really advance our education a lot. Even when we did cover advanced material, it didn’t really make a difference because we would have learned it in a year or two anyways. That assigned educator would have made a bigger difference helping struggling students rather than us.

It sounds like your program was maybe better targeted than ours, or you were a better fit for the model than me and my cohort. But on average, the data seems to suggest that most students are not significantly changed by gifted programs.

Wouldn't that make Grade 12 18 ~ 19 years of age? Has the school age been moved up a year? I vaguely remember the oldest kids in high school being 18.

If you turn 15 in 9th grade, you will turn 18 in 12th grade.

Don't know if parent has been edited to correct something, but:

9: 14-15

10: 15-16

11: 16-17

12: 17-18

Ah that's right. I should have just written in out rather than just adding 4.

At the end of your freshmen year, you have 3 years until the send of your senior year. See, Algebra is useful for something.

I would be curious to know about long term retention rather than performance in a class or on a test.

My vague memories of my Australian High school math curriculum (year 7 to 12) was something like this, I went to high school from 1997 to 2002.

Year 7 was geometry focused, Pythagoras theorem a lot of graphing things with protractors compasses etc. Calculating angles from parallel lines stuff like that.

Year 8 was much more algebra centric quadradic formula, simultaneous equations, expansion of brackets.

Year 9 was Trigonometry I remember there was a lot of 3d shapes and volumes. Volume of spheres, cones, pyramids etc.

Year 10 was Conic sections circles Ellipsis Parabolas hyperbola etc a lot of graphing again and more advanced trig.

In Year 11 and 12 I took the most advanced of the math streams I had two math classes. My other courses were Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English So math was a third of my course load, more if you counted physics which was highly math based as well.

Year 11 One class was Calculus focused, limits, fundamental theorem, basic derivatives and simple integration (Simpson's rule and stuff like that). The other class was linear algebra, vecrors, dot and cross products basic matrix manipulation and matrix transformation - reflectons skew etc.

Year 12 We covered parametric calculus, complex numbers more advanced integration and derivatives (Chain rule, substitutions etc). I vaguely remember we covered a bit of hyperbolic functions (cosh, sinh etc). The other course was statistics and probability as well things like sequences and series, stuff like binomial theorem.

I studied Engineering at uni and my first year university math was pretty much a repeat of year 11 and 12 math but a bit more in depth.

Take the grade and add 5. We generally start Kindergarten at 5 ( kinda grade 0 ).

9th grade is the US is freshman year of high school, so most students would be around age 14 ~ 15

U.S. is the only country I know that considers algebra advanced. It's fundamental in the rest of the world.

They don't, this person is not a reliable source.

It has everything to do with Algebra, because Algebra is only considered advanced because it's not taught until later. Primary school children are perfectly capable of doing algebra as shown by many other countries that teach much more "pure maths" in schools.

"This is code for advanced math, because algebra is typically considered advanced for < 9th grade children."

Seriously? Basic algebra was like 7th or 8th grade for me.

This will make life even worse for the marginalized students as well off students will have parents or other sources of learning algebra.

Indeed. A disgrace for education but a win for educational communism. It’s a good thing the US can import talent because California’s students are being trained to be cognitively lazy. How will these children fare in a society that is getting more technologically advanced, dynamic and complex by the day without the problem solving tools to handle it? I can’t wait to find out.

> A disgrace for education but a win for educational communism.

I was under the impression that (actual) communist educational systems were geared predominantly toward the most advanced students, rather than the other way around. Cranking out prizewinning physicists, mathematicians, and chess grand-masters at a somewhat greater than expected rate.

Spivak. Heck, even Yakov Perelman. Recreational Math books that could make American teens cry over themselves.

Read my comment again. I made no mention of education systems implemented in communist states. I said educational communism, education where everyone is pulled towards the mean no matter their individual effort or talent.

"Educational communism" in that it seeks to eliminate inequality (in education) by reducing everyone to zero, just as communism sought to eliminate inequality (in wealth) by reducing everyone to zero.

Not "educational communism" in the sense of educational systems modeled on those of communist countries.

The analogy is from "if I can't afford a car, then nobody should be allowed to have a car" to "if I can't understand algebra, then nobody should be allowed to learn algebra".

Exactly. I have no idea how people can’t differentiate between educational communism and education systems that were implemented in communist states. Was my wording too confusing?

Communism? The Soviet books on Math were crazily more deep than the US ones.

Read about Spivak's Calculus.

Spivak's Calculus is intended for use in a two semester course covering differential and integral calculus. It is a challenging but rewarding introduction to calculus; in my opinion, this text is appropriate for math majors while other STEM students might be better off with a textbook that didn't focus quite so much on learning proofs. It was used at MIT for the first year of Calculus, but only by the math majors.

Michael Spivak is an American mathematician born in Queens, New York.

Then, Perelman. Or any of the zillions of books of the Eastern side of Eurpoe.

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with your main point. I just had first hand experience with Spivak.

Your point reminds me of an experience I had in grad school. A good friend in the program was from (communist) Romania. We were both looking at the weekly math challenge that one of our professors posted in the hallway. It was something like construct with compass and straightedge the eight circles that are tangent to all three given (arbitrary sized and positioned) circles.

I was good at geometry in school, very good, head and shoulders above my fellow students. I really had no idea how to solve the problem and was fumbling around with it when I Romanian friend took a look and knew the correct approach immediately. It involved an isomorphic mapping of the circles into some alternate collection of straight line segments, solving the problem in that space, and then inverting the isomorphism (I think. It was many years ago--before the fall of the Berlin Wall). His high school training in geometry was clearly much deeper than mine was.

Not being sarcastic, I think you misunderstood the political environment of the US right now. The media and the bureaucrats are not seeking truths but narratives. And doing more is immediately labeled racism because well, you don't appreciate the hardship and systemic racism that the oppressed have to endure.

As for why shooting basketball 10,000 times day is considered heroic hardworking while doing 10 math exercises a day is considered being privileged and cramming and prepping and Asian? Well, that beats me too.

You can't get people to 'do more of something' if they don't show up for class, and fundamentally don't care because none of their peers do.

'Regular Teaching' works 100% well everywhere around the world where students show up ready to learn.

This is 100% a community/parent/student issue.

More conscientiousness, community participation, stable / 2 parent / married homes, 'Some Kind of Health Insurance', steady jobs, low crime, no druggie/prison parents, not living in fear, no gangs, no gang culture, other students who have normal levels of academic (and other) interests.

And they'll do fine.

Big reforms in Healthcare, Justice and for Economic Stability / Jobs would go a long way, but it will also take community participation.

It's not the curriculum or teachers. They work fine everywhere else, they work fine in Cali.

Kids that have something resembling what we might think of as a 'normal childhood' will do 'mostly fine'.

I'm British. For the lulz I decided to complete the US "GED": "The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills." (Wikipedia)

I had not looked at what it encompassed before I signed up. I was given a huge book to study from. I glanced at it briefly each day for two weeks and then sat for the exams.

I got 99% in all subjects. Apparently that was the maximum possible as the score went from 0-99% for reasons I didn't bother to explore.

It was disturbingly easy. And bear in mind that I was thrown out of my British secondary school at 16 because my exam scores were the worst on record at my school, allegedly.

I guess you didn’t study the part where they teach you percentiles. 99th percentile is the highest you can score and means out of 100 people taking the class, you scored higher than 99 of them.

That is good, but also consider that most people taking the GED have some sort of problem preventing them from completing a regular high school diploma.

> most people taking the GED have some sort of problem preventing them from completing a regular high school diploma.

Don't assume it's an academic problem though. My grandfather beat my father for years, until my father ran away from home when he was 15, consequently never finishing highschool. He got a GED years later, then eventually a masters degree. There are unfortunately many people in circumstances like his or similar, unable to finish highschool for non-academic reasons. It's important to keep this in mind because otherwise GEDs will be associated with poor academic performance, which is unfair.

It didn't state 99th percentile on the form. It specifically says 99%. And at the bottom it explains that 99% is the highest mark and the results go from 0% to 99%.

The GED isn't our A-levels. It's mostly for people who dropped out of high school for some reason and don't want to have "high school dropout" be their identity. SAT's are more akin to our college-bound testing.

I don’t even think we have A-level equivalents in Canada. We have the American AP courses, which carry 1st year university / college credit. We also have the IB diploma program available (seems to be of European origin), which can also grant 1st year credit. However these programs aren’t available at all schools.

A regular Canadian high school graduate is not eligible for admissions to many of the UK universities based on the little time I’ve spent looking at the admissions standards.

This sounds identical to the system in the US: a mix of AP and more recently IB. It is interesting to me that the IB program has somewhat high status even in countries with (optional) academic tracks that are often more rigorous than the AP or A Level systems. It actually seems to be an effective equalizer for many students hoping to study in different countries.

The GED is for drop-outs and doesn’t really encompass the range of courses available at many high schools, it’s literally the bare minimum. I’ve known 14 year olds that have passed it.

To contrast I earned some college credits during my last two years of high school due to advanced placement tests.

... Do you laugh with your friends about how one time you studied for two weeks and took the GED tests?

There must have been some use in taking it for you, right?

Otherwise, I guess I am missing the joke.

Only so that I could check the box on forms to say I had a High School Diploma/GED.

I think there must be a language difference between us, since I usually interpret "for the lulz" as meaning "without a [good] reason." Kudos to you for doing well on it.

The oddest reason I've ever heard for taking a standardized test was from a fellow who was an SAT tutor. He would take the test in order to covertly write down good math questions onto his calculator while the instructors weren't looking. He made a point of telling me that when you do this, you have to make sure you answer most questions incorrectly. He knew other tutors who took the tests, got perfect scores, and then were told they couldn't take it again. There was almost pride in his voice when he said to me (paraphrased), "If CollegeBoard sees a 30-year-old man acing the SAT, they're going to look at him funny if he tries to take it again. If they see a 30-year-old man bombing the SAT repeatedly, they're just going to think he's stupid."

Doing this is of course morally dubious, to put it nicely. But I still am amused by the whole thing. There's a degree of "sticking it to the man" both in pilfering question examples from CollegeBoard and lowering the curve by an infinitesimally small amount when he takes the exams.

That was actually a smart idea to fail the exam. As a SAT tutor your first instinct would be to show off and try to get a perfect score.

To add another anecdote, I know many people who have been through the prison system. Certain prisons will give you a test on entry to see where your skill level is on the 3 Rs. The firm rule is FAIL THE TEST. Do not try to be smart. The dumbest ones get the priority for school places in the prison. Schooling = extra credits = early release from custody.

I suspect GED is aimed at drop-outs and adult learners etc, the requirements are probably less onerous than graduating high school.

How many people that are good at math and love science / engineering decide to go into politics? I'm just talking without evidence but my guess is politics self selects for ambitious people that are completely inept when it comes to mathematics and critical thinking in general.

I think quite a bit. Congress regularly beats high end Wall Street investors when it comes to playing the equities market. This involves a great deal of understanding on mathematics topics involving everything from stats, probability and economics. They manage to do this part time while governing, so I'd have to say they are pretty adept.

I could be missing something though.

Insider trading is what you're missing. As evidenced by the March 2020 dump

Uh, what? The sharp drop in equities in February and March 2020 was a massive deleveraging caused by panic selling and leveraged traders being margin called.

I really hate sarcasm tags and I really appreciate this comment.

> I think quite a bit. Congress regularly beats high end Wall Street investors when it comes to playing the equities market

Politicians are not using math to decide which stocks to pick, they are using insider information.

edit: ok, it's clear that the parent comment was sarcasm now but you never know

Are you not able to see the special font that sarcastic comments are rendered in?

I suppose it's a disability of mine.

No they dont - they already thoroughly investigated themselves

Is there any evidence for this or is this just trendy and shallow politician hate?

https://hundred.org/en/innovations/student-government-lotter...

99pi did a story on this some time ago. Having an election means that kids who are shy or not popular miss out. But who would otherwise have valuable skills and want to contribute. So randomly selecting kids but giving them an out if they don’t like the job ended up working really well.

Can this be applied to government???

Sortition is classic and worth trying in modern times.

Tell us a little bit about your Indian high school experience. Who were your peers? Who were their parents, where were they from, how wealthy were they? How wealthy was you? Did the school have competitive entry? Did kids get kicked out for failing or doing poorly?

There’s different schools: private, public, home schooling, religious etc. I went to a public school, mostly with kids from not so great socio economic backgrounds. I wasn’t “don’t have anything to eat” poor, but I was definitely “can only afford 2 pairs of new clothes every year” poor. Most other kids were in the same boat.

The thing with schools in India though is, regardless of your status as a school, your curriculum is decided by one of the central authorities, either at a national level or at state level, and since the standardized tests for college admissions are the same for everyone, the variations in curriculum among these different schools are small.

Kids would repeat grades or have remedial classes for doing poorly. And the answer was to not lower the bar for everyone, but make students work harder for doing bad.

Same thing in France. There's just one subject - Mathematics.

Things are just spread out from 6th grade to 12th grade and specialization only happens during the last 2 years of high school.

I mean, most of that sequence builds upon itself, except geometry.

Q: How do you know you're doing math?

A: If there's a geometric interpretation :-)

Q. what is geometry? A. Adjoint functor to algebra

This isn't that different in the US. Algebra 1 to Algebra 2 to Precalculus to Calculus is a sequence that's taught over many years and there's no big dump. Geometry is the only exception from that sequence (unless you're counting Statistics or Computer Science, which are generally optional). Most students that are applying to competitive colleges are generally going to take a math course every year - there's no big dump that you seem to be envisioning.

"I always find it hilarious that the pre college education in US is so messed up. Instead of doing Algebra 1, Algebra 2, calculus, geometry as one subject that you do in a year and then completely forgetting about it till the next time you have to do it, how about you do a little bit of everything every year from grade 8-12. Problem solved."

In my experience, each year built off of the previous and implicitly provided a refresher.

There are lots of stories like this. Lot of selection bias. That is, wealthier and/or smarter people who come to the US.

I’ve taken though linear, diffeq, and discrete. Rarely use them. It’s a massive waste for most people.

They should be concentrating on what I would call “home economics”. That is, economics of the home. Edu on budget balancing, taxes, cost of things so you don’t eat out so much, cost of repair so you learn to fix things, etc.

I’ve never heard of anywhere in the US doing just one year of math. My family currently in high school are required to do math all 4 years.

No I didn't mean 1 year of math. Rather I meant breaking down math into these individual topics (that may or may not be compulsory) that you don't teach every year, makes the experience very disconnected.

California requires 2 years of Math in high school.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/hs/cefhsgradreq.asp

Good grief, how can that even work? If I had gone a full one or two years without any math class, I would have lost the habit and floundered when it came time to take a math class again. Are they deliberately setting kids up to fail in California?

Just because they're only required to take 2 years of math doesn't mean that is what most kids take.

If I recall this is how my high school was ~20 years ago and almost everyone still took at least 3 years of math with what felt like the majority still taking 4.

Those are literally the minimum possible requirements to get a diploma anywhere in the State of California; judging from the document, school districts may impose stricter requirements.

Those are unusually lenient from what I've seen; my home school district [not in California] currently requires 4 years of English, 3 years each of math, science, and social studies, 2 each of PE and foreign language or fine arts, 1 year of economics/personal finance, and 4 electives. And apparently 1 course must be AP, IB or honors. As a matter of practice, you'd be expected to take 4 years of English, math, science, and social studies, and at least 3 of foreign language anyways (and indeed, there's an 'advanced degree' that has those requirements; it looks like 2/3 of students graduated with the 'advanced degree').

> I always find it hilarious that the pre college education in US is so messed up. Instead of doing Algebra 1, Algebra 2, calculus, geometry as one subject that you do in a year and then completely forgetting about it for the rest of the high school, how about you do a little bit of everything every year from grade 8-12. Problem solved.

I don't understand. US high school kids only do math one year out of the 4? And nothing else math related during the other 3 years?

I mean, instead of doing a little bit of math spread across all the years so you know, they don't forget everything?

Does this go for other subjects as well?

> I don't understand. US high school kids only do math one year out of the 4? And nothing else math related during the other 3 years?

No, he/she meant that US high schools divide Math into algebra, geometry, trig etc. which are taught in different years as opposed to simply having these as sections in a single Math textbook which increases in difficulty every year.

High school is too early to divide up Math into these subjects especially if you are going to be studying only one of these in a whole year.

Math in US high schools ends at what most countries would consider a middle school level. Algebra 2 is generally the only requirement. The vast majority of students graduate without ever even knowing what calculus is.

While this is true, I would like to point out a good portion of schools do allow students to continue to more advanced math if they elect to.

I went to high school in California, I was able to take all the way up to what was called Calculus BC, which covered up to learning integration techniques. This was in a bay area high school that was underfunded, and the majority of our senior class didn't graduate.

But the vast majority of students stop at Algebra 2, and struggle through it.

That means nothing. I have met plenty of people that did calculus in high school and got pushed back into remedial classes in college. Exposure to a concept does not mean proficiency in it.

I'd have taken exposure over nothing. I had to teach myself - as an adult - calculus, linear algebra, probability (outside of the ever-so-brief introduction in school) and trigonometry. I personally don't think I did a very good job as my own teacher either. 3Blue1Brown was a lifesaver and every now and again I try to brush up on the topics - not for my benefit at all but for my child's benefit in the future.

I think schooling absolutely failed me in almost every regard once I made it past the 4th grade. Half of what I learned isn't even true anymore or were partial truths/mostly lies to make it easier for a 5th/6th grader to grok and they'll be told "the truth" at some point later in high school or college only to never be told the truth or not have the opportunity to attend college where you finally would have been told the truth.

Exposure to something is the first step in learning about something.

> Half of what I learned isn't even true anymore or were partial truths/mostly lies

This is true of most levels of education. What you learn in elementary turns out to be bullshit because of what you learn in high school which turns out to be bullshit because of what you learn in undergrad which turns out to be bullshit because of graduate school which turns out to be bullshit because of the work of an army of scientists.

Yes, but often times the army of scientists had already done their work. Even in the late 90's a lot of what I was learning was already known to be false but the updates hadn't yet hit by textbooks published in 1982. The teachers even sometimes already knew it to be wrong but had to teach it anyway because it was still considered part of the state curriculum. But the more common and larger issue was the partial truths/mostly lies - even if some of the lies are arguably justified to make learning easier for some kids. The better teachers wouldn't lie but would simply say "You'll be taught about that later in a higher grade".

> Math in US high schools ends at what most countries would consider a middle school level.

I agree that the nationwide baseline is abysmally, or even tragically, low. This is clearly problematic in and of itself. However, there isn’t a standard curriculum for US high schools as this varies widely by state and town/district/school.

My wife grew up in China, went to a good high school, but is only proficient in math up to the algebra 2 level (maybe?) considering she took the liberal arts track. If you aren't working up to STEM, I'm sure you don't take calculus in many countries.

The question in my mind is, how useful is calculus in most people's lives?

Not very useful, since most people don't work in technical professions. But if you want to pursue further technical studies, then that's a different ballgame.

To me, the question isn't whether Calculus will be useful to somebody who intends to study nursing, but rather whether the doorways to other venues will be made that much narrower, or closed altogether. Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level, whether they wish to pursue nursing or engineering.

Children and their families ought to have a choice, including the choice to march forward toward their individual academic ambition and ability.

> Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level,

That's not true; the proposed Framework model shifts from a focus on breadth differentiation to a focus on depth differentiation.

You could just as well argue that the existing approach tries to force all students to be “at the same level”, since it neglects the differentiation opportunity that the proposed framework focuses on. That would, also, be wrong, but no more wrong than your characterization.

You are mistaken. Under the Equitable Math proposal, all children are to be in the same technical class regardless of their ability. Children will not be allowed to take Algebra in middle school, and children will not be allowed to take Calculus until specifically the senior year. Differentiation may only occur at the senior year of high school.

The Common Core does not neglect differentiation opportunity, and neither does it dictate or detail that children must be in one class over another; that is left up to each state. Under the Common Core as implemented in California, children may take Algebra with an Algebra teacher based on their individual ability. The entire Common Core specification for math can be read in one day.

The Common Core does dictate learning targets to be met for any particular official class, whether that is Algebra I/II or Geometry. The Common Core also emphasizes deep learning over rote memorization, but it critically does not require that all students must be at the same level. This is the central point of contention, and not whether the Common Core ought go even deeper.

As a detail, note that Californian classrooms may have around 40 children in a math class, and that penalties for classroom sizes end in middle school. These are the conditions under which math teachers must address individual variability.

Equitable Math would be a SOLID win for private schools and after-school math programs such as RSM.

"Under Equitable Math, all children must be at the same level, whether they wish to pursue nursing or engineering."

Should we be striving for equitable or equality?

"Children and their families ought to have a choice, including the choice to march forward toward their individual academic ambition and ability"

This doesn't sound equitable.

Do nurses actually use calculus?

No they do math every year, it's just not well designed so that each topic is spread evenly. [Updated the wording to make it more clear]

NY State does this, or at least did back when I was in high school. It was called “integrated math.”

what about this info ?

Literacy Rate of India 2021 - To know development in a society, Literacy is another proper indicator of economic development. For purpose of census, a person in age limit of seven and above, who can both write and read with understanding in any of the language is considered as a literate in India. ... Although India has raised its current literacy rate of 74.04% (2021) from 12% at the time of Independence in 1947, its still lag behind the world average literacy rate of 84%. Compared with other nations, Republic of India has the largest illiterate population.

You’re talking about people who don’t go to school. That’s not relevant at all to the discussion here.

More Indians speak English than Americans. So rates don’t really matter.

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