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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how path-dependency makes these things seem like controversial reforms, while nearby districts have always done it this way. In Berkeley, for example, there isn't any course called "Algebra I" or II. Through 8th grade there is just math, with no differentiation. Then for 9th grade you can test into an advanced track, and people take either Math 1/2/3 or Advanced Math 1/2/3. In senior year any of these people can take AP Statistics or Calculus AB, but only the advanced track can take AP Calculus BC.

So anyway the point is Berkeley has always done math the "reform" way and its math outcomes are much better in every respect. It gives one the impression that San Francisco's issues are other than with the reform.

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Berkeley public schools have a terrible reputation:

https://www.greatschools.org/california/berkeley/25-Berkeley...

Slightly above average in California is a failing grade by US standards. (California schools are 43rd in the nation.)

If you look at the breakdown of that 7/10 rating, test scores are 9 and “college readiness” an 8, while “equity”, whatever that means, is 4, which is what pulls the overall rating to a 7. This rating is not really a measure of the quality of the school.

A school filled with wealthy families will always have solid readiness and test scores, just because the families can afford whatever help is needed. A quality school wouldn't just let underprivileged children slip through.

I agree with you that this is important on a societal level, but making such a vague, contentious, and poorly defined input, which individual schools have a questionable ability to influence, 33% of a school's overall rating is nonsensical.

Imagine a school with a 10 for equity, but a 6 for test scores and 5 for college readiness. It will get the same 7 rating as Berkeley High. Which would you rather send your kids to?

Berkeley's scores from you link:

* College Readiness, 8/10: This school is above the state average in key measures of college and career readiness.

* Test Scores, 9/10: Test scores at this school are far above the state average, suggesting that most students at this school are performing at or above grade level.

* Equity, 4/10: Underserved students at this school may be falling behind other students in the state, and this school may have significant achievement gaps.

> So anyway the point is Berkeley has always done math the "reform" way and its math outcomes are much better in every respect.

If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade, it's not getting even halfway decent results. If they're better than the results in San Francisco, all you can learn from that is that Berkeley has extreme problems with student quality, and quality is even lower in San Francisco (or rather, the part of San Francisco that's being measured).

> If Berkeley's system prevents everyone from taking calculus before 12th grade

High school in the US ends at 12th grade -- how do they teach physics without calculus?

There are three different AP Physics tests—1, 2, and C—and only AP Physics C requires calculus. The others presumably give you the formulas and expect you to memorize them and use algebra rather than being able to derive them.

You memorize the equations for position and velocity without learning how you can derive one from the other. In my school we took no calc physics sophomore year then senior had the option to take AP physics which finally introduced calc.

My high school offered more than most, I was able to take multi variable calculus which served me well in college.

I don't know what they actually do, but the calculus needed in first year physics is simple enough (both in what things from calculus you need and in what functions you have to do those things on) that's it is reasonable to teach it on the fly as part of physics class. It goes pretty fast when you aren't bothering with rigorous proofs.

I took physics in 9th grade along with everyone else in my program, and it didn't include calculus.

Physics in many high school programs is taught without it and just uses algebra-based methods.

My mom helped write the Texas math curriculum and had high hopes for San Diego Unified when my kids just happened to hit the roll-out years for "common core" (the math 1/2/3 you refer to). She was compelled to admit it was a catastrophe for my daughter and useless for my son.

My daughter's story is tragic. I think it basically came down to teachers just not giving a shit about the outcomes and presenting rote lessons. So when my daughter came home for help (my undergrad is in physics) I would try to explain how to solve a blazingly obvious problem (e.g. solve for x where 2x + 3 = 2y, and y is 4) she would lose her marbles, telling me that's not what her teacher said, and best I could figure, she had been taught some weird path through something geometric, and there was no way I was going to figure that out. So, my knowledge of math was completely invalidated, despite my having a more advanced math education than her teacher. This went on for a couple years and she finally failed a course.

She fixed the grade over the next quarter and we incidentally moved to another school district for my job. She excelled and got an A in pre-calc as a junior. But the new school district enrolled her in calculus and then decided they didn't have enough students to justify the section, so they cancelled it and rolled everyone into other courses. They decided my daughter had only taken 3 years of math so they had her take Algebra 2. After getting an A in pre-calc, they had her take Algebra 2. The next year she enrolled in college and they decided that she had to take a math class, but she would be best served by taking pre-calc again! What. The. Literal. Fuck!

My mom, the math teacher who wrote the Texas curriculum, and adores the whole Berkeley math education scene, leaned in to help her (mostly just to recover from the crushed self esteem) and near the end of the semester my mom called to tell me my daughter should not be pressed to do any more math. She hates it, feels terrible about herself whenever she thinks about it, and it would be best to never think about it again.

She's now a philosophy major, finishing junior year at a top college with a 3.9, straight As last quarter, and as long as we don't equatr logic to math, she can rock logic all day long

Fuck every math department. Every fucking math teacher, professor, and administrator who buys into this math reform shit can fuck right off.

Ok. So, my son. What of him? He was ahead a year when we went to that other school district. And they wouldn't have been able to keep him up with his peer group. So 18 months before the pandemic we pulled him out for home school, my mom taught him, and got him through 3 years of math in 1 year. He started high school in pre-calc.

Same parents, same grandparents. He just happened to avoid common core entirely by virtue of circumstances and is now going to UCSC as a math major, having finished every math class at Foothill Community College a semester before graduating high school.

Ugh, wow, that sounds unbelievably frustrating, sorry you and your kids had to go through that. Thanks for sharing your story.

"Fuck every math department. Every fucking math teacher, professor, and administrator who buys into this math reform shit can fuck right off."

Essentially no mathematician buys into this stuff. In general professional mathematicians and mathematics educators are little involved in the processes that design curricula in public schools. They are simply not included. No one feels more threatened by expertise than education school professors.

i had no idea that's where this came from

i've reviewed multiple resumes from people in cali for east coast jobs and noticed fresh grads who went to great schools wrote down 'advanced math' on their resume and i thought it was so strange for it to be that vague that i definitely overlooked quite a few of them because other people named courses more clearly

> noticed fresh grads who went to great schools wrote down 'advanced math' on their resume

I assume you are reviewing the resumes of college grads. Writing "advanced math" still seems weird to me.

In this case, the comment you were replying to referred to the high school curriculum in the town of Berkeley, not the eponymous university located in the same town.

I took AP Calculus BC junior year and there were some sophomores in my class - is there no accelerated path?

I don't specifically know about Berkeley, but my experience has been there's always an accelerated track for some students whose parents push the school system to let them into the right classes. At some point in middle school I was bussed to a local high school along with some of my peers to take advanced math not offered in middle school, and in high school all of my math classes were with people 1-2 years older than me.

I took Calc in my senior year but I took AP Chemistry as a sophomore. As far as my experience goes, you just ask.

What's your source for "math outcomes are way better in every aspect"? Figuring this out is trickier than it seems. Not only do students vary in demographics, socio-economic factors, and English-learners, but there are also relatively way more children of professors at Berkeley schools than in SF.

The state test scores are broken down by all those factors (except for "child of professor" which I am not sure is really a difference, since there is a UC and a CSU and several other universities in SF) so you can make apples-to-apple comparisons for yourself.

Is there a path to take AP Calculus BC before senior year? If not, this still seems limiting.

The world's foremost university is 500 meters from Berkeley High. I assure you that no person who ever wanted to study math was denied the opportunity. Anyone with 2 years of high school can enroll in multivariate calculus or linear algebra at UC Berkeley. In fact, anyone on Earth can study them virtually, for credit!

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