How math is being taught is a major concern that's not being addressed. For the past decade, SFUSD has been following the lead of Dr. Boaler from Stanford (et. al.), de-tracking, deemphasizing memorizing math facts and skills practice for "problem-solving," and "meaning making," which usually involves putting students of diverse abilities into groups where they ... solve problems and make meaning ... or at least that's what it looks like from an Admin POV. They are "engaged". What's really happening is that many are NOT learning math, at all. We've now seen a decade long slide in math skills (anecdotally) and math scores (from standardized tests). While we may get 8th grade Algebra 1, what does it matter if it's taught so poorly, using methods that have little evidence supporting their efficacy?
San Francisco for the last 10 years has been using an internal pre K to 11th grade math curriculum which hadn't been peer reviewed. There has been a K-8 audit with dismal results. They still need to look at their high school internal Algebra I,II,Geometry and compression classes.
I think it is unfair to put the onus on the math focus committee. In talking to a few members on there, they did look at what others were doing but they also had to balance this with what the Board of Education will accept. Those slides were not generated by the actual committee members themselves but by the facilitators which were presented to the committee at the start of the meetings.
How math is being taught is a major concern that's not being addressed. For the past decade, SFUSD has been following the lead of Dr. Boaler from Stanford (et. al.), de-tracking, deemphasizing memorizing math facts and skills practice for "problem-solving," and "meaning making," which usually involves putting students of diverse abilities into groups where they ... solve problems and make meaning ... or at least that's what it looks like from an Admin POV. They are "engaged". What's really happening is that many are NOT learning math, at all. We've now seen a decade long slide in math skills (anecdotally) and math scores (from standardized tests). While we may get 8th grade Algebra 1, what does it matter if it's taught so poorly, using methods that have little evidence supporting their efficacy?
San Francisco for the last 10 years has been using an internal pre K to 11th grade math curriculum which hadn't been peer reviewed. There has been a K-8 audit with dismal results. They still need to look at their high school internal Algebra I,II,Geometry and compression classes.
I think it is unfair to put the onus on the math focus committee. In talking to a few members on there, they did look at what others were doing but they also had to balance this with what the Board of Education will accept. Those slides were not generated by the actual committee members themselves but by the facilitators which were presented to the committee at the start of the meetings.
parents continue to vote with their feet.