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 ...
It was designed to hold back those who are able to advance - mainly Asians and Whites - in the name of "equity."
San Francisco is restoring eighth-grade algebra after more than a decade, with the San Francisco Board of Education voting 4-3
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“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.”
My son hated having to show infinite steps the textbook and teacher mandated in order to answer simple two-step math problems - he’d get the answers right but the problem wrong b/c he hadn’t shown all of the unnecessary steps - which he refused to do (middle school).
Thank God he had an “old style” math Algebra II teacher in 9th grade who recognized his style of learning and didn’t require a morass of stupid steps to arrive at a correct answer. Son went on to tutor Algebra II, and on to AP Calculus parts A,B and C, where he also had an old-style teacher who recognized that students arrive at correct answers using different methods - or - “thinking outside the box.”
He now works in the IT industry.
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.
Just look at the racists who voted against teaching algebra. (Hint: It is the Asians (old-family Chinese, new Communist Chinese immigrants, and (a few) remaining whites) who are requesting algebra be taught. BLM wants everybody dumbed down to the least common denominator. Which used to be an arithmetic term.)
You don’t want to mess with Chinese parents when it comes to their kids and math.
They’ll let the government get away with other stuff, though.
There are going to be a lot of kids who will (or at least should) be angry when they hit their 20s and 30s because they got absolutely no education due to liberal insanity. New Math. COVID lockdowns. DEI. Indulging transgender insanity. Everyone gets an A. And the liberal elites who push it send their kids to private schools where they actually get an education. I’d be angry if I spent the last 15 years in a liberal insane asylum that passed for a public school and got a substandard education. All the evidence is coming out now that young people in their 20s have not learned.
This was not an experiment. The commies knew what they were doing.
Most public high school graduates from these Democrat controlled big cities are functionally illiterate. Most are unable to do simple arithmetic.
Eventually, red states will end up using vouchers. Unless of course, Gavin Newsom becomes President in 2029.
I was a software developer for 44 years and I could never do math.
When I was a kid, my step-father sat me down and we went through algebra problems over and over. If I got one wrong, he thumped me on the head. Not too hard but hard enough for me to feel it. It sounds horrible, I know, but it worked. I don’t work in a math field but I still know how to do math in my head fairly well, including algebra. LOL.
The San Francisco Board of Education’s gonna have to dance more prestidigitatiously than Fred and Ginger if they’re gonna reconcile DEI with mastering foundational math.
Common Core was ridiculous.
Math be rasis
Put the kids to work doing homework and keep them off the streets. We see the results in the black community daily when the ceiling is lowered.
It was a purely socialist effort, and one in which all were required to live with the lowered expectations equally, as required by the ideology.
Or physics, a most practical subject for understanding the world, reasoning your way through problems to find solutions, putting those math skills to use.
District Judge WhooDe Who will step in with a stay and force the board to take Algebra off the curriculum, stating that “Math is hard and kids shouldn’t feel bad about not being able to do it...”
Algebra is a thinking skill which requires mathematical logic.
Any thinking skill involving mathematical or verbal logic is empowering to those seeking individual independence.
Hence, thinking skills are a threat to Big Brother.
What we have seen in the last have century is that the purpose of schooling has NOT been learning but indoctrination.
Or Chemistry or Biology. Having 9 months and 5 days a week to teach what is usually crammed into 3 short hours a week for the short college semester should be a luxury filled with continuity and knowledge.
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