It's affirmative action for the Russians and Chinese! More diversity on the world stage.

That said if word problems involving social justice inspire the kids more... and sure, some kids won't take Calculus and some might need to take Algebra II later... but those should be a small percentage, not everyone.

Why limit it to Social Justice? What's wrong with Cosmic justice? The dinosaurs didn't deserve to get wiped out millions of years ago, so let's bring them back, and then wipe out all mammals!

We were transforming math education, and change is hard and scary," said Pariso

Why don't people want to add racism to math? Racism is such a popular thing. Bemoans Pariso.

The way you get social justice in mathematics is to teach the kids math

This.

Even my carpenter had to do math to put in my porch. The implicit assumption of the left is that POC are incapable of academics. Conservatives blame bad schools and teacher unions. The fact that charter and religious schools can teach math to POC says it all, as does the hatred of teacher unions for these schools.

Fred Reed, five years ago:
"The intelligent policy is to educate black children, something that the public schools of Washington manage, at great expense, not to do. In fact the prevailing (if unspoken) view seems to be that black children cannot be educated, an idea whose only defect is that it is wrong: the Catholic schools of Washington have been educating black children for years."

The above is not Fred's only point.

There is an institutionalized stupidity at work. We need to STOP TREATING TEACHERS AS SPECIAL.

Equity: Dumb down everything for everybody!

Its not dumbing things down for everyone. The rich will find a way to keep educating their kids. Children with strong family structures will find a way. Its really our most vulnerable, poor, and economically disadvantaged youth that are getting the shaft.

If you'd like a hint of why we're mired in stupidity, unable to distinguish between feelings and achievement, unable to field a competent government official or govern our own schools, just take a look at this compendium of entitlement and stupidity.

Don't imagine these people aren't near you.

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In other news, I was accused of being an "ableist" for citing Reasoning Deficit Disorder as the cause of outrage over the Rittenhouse verdict.
Self-importance denies all need for effort.

This is why teachers should be subject-matter experts, not people with a BA in “ education.”

Wikipedia has a nice paragraph on the concept in Orwell's book '1984':

" ... in Room 101, the interrogator O'Brien tells the thought criminal Smith that control over physical reality is unimportant to the Party, provided the citizens of Oceania subordinate their real-world perceptions to the political will of the Party; and that, by way of doublethink: "Sometimes, Winston. [Sometimes it is four fingers.] Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once".

"Its really our most vulnerable, poor, and economically disadvantaged youth that are getting the shaft."

"Our"?

Just what makes you think it is YOUR and MY responsibility to see that these people succeed? You didn't overtly ask for benefits for this group, but such wording carries with it the assumption the "woke" want: the success of the have-nots is because that "haves" will not magically give them prosperity. That's not true. In a nation where the Internet and libraries and public education are ALL provided, personal failure is the exclusive property of those who fail.

Just look at the bum taking a dump on a California sidewalk.

Every mind that works gets that you cannot give anyone anything and have it valued to the degree that earning conveys value. Pretending that it is our fault that some are not successful is just nuts.

We live in the jungle still - it just has buildings in it. Everywhere you look: competition, even in the size of lies to disguise that.

Guess who loves this new curriculum? The Chinese. This article was in the Wall Street Journal the other day.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coddling-of-american-children-is-a-boon-to-beijing-china-education-college-victim-11637525811

People. I’ve said it here before, and I will say it again, take control of your children’s math education. There are lots of free materials online, but if that makes you nervous, go to KUMON. All the Asian students take it from preschool on. Americans don’t take basic education seriously enough and you only find out how important it is when your kid can’t learn a trade or do STEM work bc they don’t understand math, but by then, it’s too late. At the end of the day, you are responsible for what your child learns. Don’t farm it out to people who could just as easily be working at the DMV as they are in your child’s first grade class.

I will say I did a Social Justice thing in a math class I taught. I'd heard that milk cost more in low income neighborhoods, so we tested it. We called several stores in different MA towns and found out the price of milk, looked up average income, and looked at racial distribution, and looked to see if we could find patterns.

We did not find any strong correlations but of course we probably didn't have enough data points. We did find towns that had almost all white people or all black tended to be poorer than those that had racial distributions closer to the State percentages.

Anyhow the kids enjoyed it, and I think they learned something.

If Algebra 1 in 9th grade is "dumbing down", things have changed since I was in high school (mid-60s). We all took Algebra 1 in 9th grade, and only the top math students took calculus at all. This was at a highly rated public school in a lily-white suburb.

NicoleK if there is any correlation it is to recoup the cost of looting or higher insurance rates and land rental costs, not racism. Just prices dependent on cost and risk.

This will increase disparity. How? Because the folks who can afford it, or the communities that collectively subsidize it, will opt for private schools.

This is Catholic schools, Jewish schools, and other private schools. It's the after school tutoring, Kumon, at Khan Academy (which people with means can force their kids to do because they can be home or have a nanny force the issue.

I've been shopping for private high schools in the DC area. Cheap is 30k a year. Dirt cheap is the most religious... At about 25k. Expensive is around 51k.

So... If this thinking hit the DC area, should things get more homogeneous? Or would the kids at these private schools have an even bigger leg up?

Like I said Joe, we didn't find a correlation but that's not the point. The point is when you pick project that the kids are interested in they get excited about it and do the work more willingly.

So maybe stats on racial problems will be the hook that draws them in.

Nicole Only if done correctly, unbiasedly. Which we are seeing many teachers are not doing. A A basic statistical view of who gets killed by cops. well 1/4 are black when population is 1/7 (supposedly indicating an anti-black bias) but you should never do statistics that way. Police do not interact with everyone in the population, they tend to interact mainly with criminals, where blacks are not 1/7 but closer to 1/2. (indicating a extreme pro black bias, that blacks are less likely to be shot by police than whites are)
It is too easy for activist teachers/administrators to do it incorrectly, and the kids who are just learning won't realize they are being manipulated. They learn an incorrect lesson and a lie. All you would need to do ( in the milk case) is leave out that it's not comparable income areas. Leave out whether one is a high crime areas (high insurance costs), leave out land costs and taxes which will change the price of milk when comparing food prices.

As to the population shooting one an equivalent example would find 2 yr olds are the best drivers, IF you are only going by age of people driving when having an accident vs age of people in population, that's what you get. Zero 2 yr olds were driving vs millions of 2 yr olds gives them the rank of bast drivers. But obviously you should not use general population but should use % of population who drive or miles driven (tougher to get). Which makes it obvious 2 yr olds aren't the best driviers.

This race to the bottom creates great opportunities for private schools and for homeschooling -- which is why any day now, I expect serious efforts by the teachers' unions to ban both practices.

The idiots who think they are helping POC with this policy should see the movie Hidden Figures and be ashamed at their own ignorance.