> Let’s say you flip the recommendation to “smarten up” math education K-12. Teach Algebra gradually over K-6, do Geometry 7-8. Trig in 9, Calc 1 & 2 in 10-11, and Real Analysis in 12.
That's a straw-man, no one wants to make math education that aggressive.
> What do you think the outcome will be in aggregate? I’ll bet my hat it does nothing to produce better outcomes while furthering the race-influenced class divide.
If you dumb down math education, you will probably just end up "furthering the race-influenced class divide":
http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html:
> Modeled on Summerhill, and supported by the challenges at that time of structures of authority, both within education and the larger society, "free schools" proliferated, and eventually helped give rise to the Open Education Movement. The Open Education Movement was nothing new; it was just a repetition of progressivist programs promoted in the 1920s, but the idea of letting children decide each day what they should learn at activity tables, play corners, or reading centers, was once again promoted as profound and revolutionary.41
> The effects of the Open Education Movement were particularly devastating to children with limited resources, due to their lack of access to supplemental education from the home, or tutoring in basic skills outside of school. Lisa Delpit, an African American educator who taught in an inner city school in Philadelphia in the early 1970s wrote about the negative effects of this type of education on African American children. Relating a conversation with another African American teacher, she explained, "White kids learn how to write a decent sentence. Even if they don't teach them in school, their parents make sure they get what they need. But what about our kids? They don't get it at home..." Summarizing the effects of the open classroom movement from her perspective in 1986, Professor Delpit wrote:
>> I have come to believe that the "open classroom movement," despite its progressive intentions, faded in large part because it was not able to come to terms with the concerns of poor and minority communities.42
> Another prominent educator, Nancy Ichinaga, came to similar conclusions about the effects of the Open Education Movement on low income students, based on her experience as principal of Bennett-Kew Elementary school, in Inglewood, California. Ichinaga began a 24 year career as principal of Bennett-Kew in the Fall of 1974, one month before scores from the California's standardized test were released. At that time the school included only grades K-3 and it was called Bennett Elementary school. Bennett's 1974 third grade students ranked at the third percentile in the state, almost the absolute bottom. The school was then in its fourth year of the "Open Structure Program" and the student body throughout her tenure as principal was nearly 100 percent minority and low income. Reacting with shock and dismay at the test scores, Ichinaga confronted the teachers who admitted that their program was not working. The entire student body was illiterate and the student centered mathematics program was in shambles.
> With the collaboration of her teachers, Nancy Ichinaga introduced clearly defined and well structured reading and math programs which included practice in basic skills. After a few years, test scores increased to well beyond the 50th percentile, and by the end of the 20th century, her school had earned national acclaim and became a model for others to emulate.43 At an education conference held in May 1999, Principal Ichinaga described the situation in her school in 1974: