Posted on 03/27/2026 6:42:04 AM PDT by Libloather
San Francisco is restoring eighth-grade algebra after more than a decade, with the San Francisco Board of Education voting 4-3 Tuesday night to approve the change, reversing a controversial policy that had eliminated the course in middle schools in the name of equity.
The vote follows years of debate over academic rigor, access and declining outcomes, as families increasingly pushed the district to expand advanced coursework options.
"Families want to see a public school system that offers rigorous coursework. This is absolutely an instructional strategy," school board President Phil Kim said, according to The New York Times. "But it’s also a retention tool to bring families to our district and demonstrate we will not only take care of your children, but we will teach them, too."
The original policy, implemented roughly 12 years ago, was designed to give students more time to master foundational math before advancing. However, the results fell short of expectations, the Times reported.
"For years, San Francisco tried to achieve equity not by raising the floor, but by lowering the ceiling," Stanford economist Thomas S. Dee told the Times. "It's a problem we see nationally."
Under the new plan, algebra will return as an option for all eighth graders across the district, with multiple pathways designed to expand access while maintaining academic readiness.
District officials plan to offer algebra as an elective taken alongside standard math coursework, while some students who meet eligibility requirements may take it as their primary math class.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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4-3?! How could it even be that close? I’ll wager the commies in SF public education do all they can to not teach the subject.
Employers need to know that each woke city has terrible students and therefore should not be hired.
equity = racism of low expectations
Democrats are quite racist.
That’s okay they only screwed the kids for 10 years right.
Think about it The advocates of “science” banned an entire subject.
Three out of seven board members like to keep our children stupid. Maybe they need a law against stupid people on the school board.
Because then the teachers themselves would would have to learn algebra.
Which is an indictment of their teaching methods in elementary school.
I had to check to see if this was from the Bee....
It’s really hard to understand how academia can be so chalk full of stupid people.
Chock (speaking of stupid - ha!)
Wow, they are going to teach basic Algebra to the kids as well as take care of them? What a concept.
What I never understood is how, given every week day for nine months the pubic screwl system fails to provide a curriculum in alzebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus during a student’s last four years of captivity that results in a meaningful understanding in the use of these tools and mastery of the subject.
In most cases it is an exercise with no explanations or reason for being, just an exercise to pass the class.
WTF??? Probably ... black kids were not taught arithmetic in elementary school and therefore were not prepared for algebra and so the failure rate among black kids was high, so they blamed it on racism. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think I took algebra in 9th grade, geometry in 10th grade, algebra II in 11th grade.
That be intellectual racism!
” in the name of equity.”
Translation: We aren’t racist but blacks aren’t smart enough to do algebra.
The quiet racism of liberals keeps rearing its ugly head. The problem is their racism has real consequences.
Black teachers taught old school math, not the gimmick math that became popular later. I couldn’t even help my kids with homework and I have 2 degrees (IT and Accounting) because they were using Lattice Math.
The people on the voting body were probably raised with dumbed down education and that why the vote was so close. They probably have “Math anxiety”, and couldn’t bear seeing susceptible kids triggered like they themselves were.
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