No, Virginia is not moving to eliminate advanced high school math classes

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Education

No, Virginia is not moving to eliminate advanced high school math classes

By Hannah Natanson
April 26, 2021 at 6:21 p.m. EDT

Facing attacks from right-wing pundits and scrutiny from lawmakers, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction said on Monday that the state is not eliminating advanced high school mathematics courses. ... Superintendent James Lane said the Virginia Department of Education is in the early stages of a regularly scheduled revision of its mathematics Standards of Learning, which guide school systems in their course offerings across all areas of instruction. As part of that revision process, which takes place every seven years, state officials recently began workshopping some ideas as to how Virginia could teach mathematics in a way that better prepared children for college and the workforce, Lane said.

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The kerfuffle began when Loudoun County School Board member Ian Serotkin (Blue Ridge) posted on his public Facebook page about the initiative. He wrote on April 22 that he had received a briefing on the initiative, which he wrote promised to “revamp the K-12 math curriculum statewide.”

He praised the initiative for “some noble goals,” including the fact that it “provides a pathway for every student to be able to take calculus or higher math by the end of high school if they so choose.” But he criticized it for what he said it would do to advanced math classes, claiming the proposal would force all seventh-graders to take the exact same math class, all eighth-graders to take the exact same math class, and so on through 11th grade. ... “As currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade,” Serotkin wrote. “That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this.”

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At Serotkin’s request, the Loudoun County School Board will discuss the initiative at its meeting Tuesday night.

Hannah Natanson Follow https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson
Hannah Natanson is a reporter covering education and K-12 schools in Virginia.

[exboyfil]

1. Lockstep classes in math would be insane

My daughter finished all of her math by the time she graduated high school (through Differential Equations and College Statistics). This allowed her to trim two years off the time to complete her engineering degree.