Virginia To Eliminate All Accelerated Maths Classes Prior To 11th Grade. Because ‘Equity’
Dumbing down America so that no one achieves more than others
Last week, Katya wrote an outstanding essay about the perils of woke math. This week, Virginia’s Department of Education announced that it will be eliminating accelerated maths classes in all public schools as they strive for “equity.”
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system.
Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin posted about the change via Facebook on Tuesday. According to Serotkin, he learned of the change the night prior during a briefing from staff on the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI).
“[A]s currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade,” he said. “That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this. All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses.”
. . . . On VDOE’s website, the state features an infographic that indicates VMPI would require “concepts” courses for each grade level. It states various goals like “[i]mprove equity in mathematics learning opportunities,” “[e]mpower students to be active participants in a quantitative world,” and “[i]dentify K-12 mathematics pathways that support future success.”
During a webinar posted on YouTube in December, a member of the “essential concepts” committee claimed that the new framework would exclude traditional classes like Algebra 1 and Geometry.
Committee member Ian Shenk, who focused on grades 8-10, said: “Let me be totally clear, we are talking about taking Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 – those three courses that we’ve known and loved … and removing them from our high school mathematics program, replacing them with essential concepts for grade eight, nine, and 10.”
Needless to say, people have thoughts (via Twitchy).
Let me preview what's going to happen: Rich families will pay to give their kids extra classes or go to private school, and everyone else will get an inferior education.
Stop treating Virginia's students like cultural guinea pigs! https://t.co/rHCh1BDOy7 #FoxNews @VA_GOP
— Peter Doran (@PeterBDoran) April 23, 2021
If you live in Virginia, supposedly the Silicon Valley of the East, and your kid is good in math, Ralph Northam wants you to leave. https://t.co/5YypscCq6u
— Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) April 23, 2021
Xi Jinping would like to thank the Commonwealth of Virginia for its kind assistance in hindering American advancement and thus abetting ascendant Chinese Communist Party hegemony. https://t.co/wSk5vybNef
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) April 23, 2021
Apparently, and as in all things woke, the goal is to stoop to the lowest bar possible and then force everyone under it. Equity apparently means methodically ensuring through systemic governmental and institutional power that everyone but the elite and ruling class is equally uneducated, ill-informed, and devoid of an ounce of curiosity or capacity for independent thought.
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Interesting how Communist politicians are acting as though they will never have to face the wrath of the voters ever again……
When you have the ability to gin up a couple of hundred thousand votes out of thin air in any major D city, the wrath of the voters becomes immaterial. The key to getting elected to pretty much any statewide office is to win the D primary. And that is usually a left wing race.
In VA tragically most Virginians agree with this BS which is why they voted for Ralph Northam.
I seriously want to exhume my grandparents and get their remains out of the state.
Northam’s a doctor, is he not? Something tells me he took lots of math in school.
…when not in a drunken stupor en route to a Klan rally.
“Our” communists…. the REAL Communists… the CCP isn’t concerned with “equity”… they seek superiority. One doesn’t get that with mediocraty.
Ten years ago my son’s 8th grade class decided that all the kids should be taught the same level for math. As a result the class moved at the speed as the slowest student. We realized what was happening and enrolled my son is supplemental math to accelerate his learning. Another family also followed suit. Needless to say there were only two kids that tested out of Algebra I in 9th grade. His old school went back to the two levels of math.
Diversity, inequity, and exclusion.
In short: DIE
Wow. The public education establishment can’t stop providing reasons for Parents to demand that the education dollars follow the student in K – 12 just as in College.
I hate what is happening to my state, and I hate that it will be get worse when we re-elect McAuliffe.
Also, I see political ads saying “endorsed by Ralph Northam”…when did Gov Blackface officially get off scott free and become a ringing endorsement???
Democrats 100 years ago:
“I know something of the history of this legislation [forbidding concealed carry of handguns]. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.” — Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941).
Democrats today:
“Charges of racism, sexism, cultural appropriation, and white supremacy are reserved for the purpose of hampering conservatives and white citizens, and were never intended to be applied to Progressives and Marxists.”
I thought algebra was the coolest thing ever until I had an algebra course. They know how to take the fun out of it.
It probably was cool! The issue is that arithmetic / math instruction in this country has been a disheartening slog for decades.
I had a whale of a bad time with subtraction and my mother sat me down and had me work some problems. They were teaching some insanity with “Cross out and borrow”. Mom about burst a vessel! She then showed me a method that I think is known as dot-and-carry, but am not sure. Anyway, the system was very simple, and I cranked out lots of problems for her and every one of them was right.
The next day I went to class, took a 100-question subtraction test, and finished it even before the kids who were top students. I got every single answer right, and received a “0” (F) grade. Why? Because I didn’t “show my work”. I didn’t use the method Miss Robot taught us.
Bear in mind: this was the 1950s; this stiffling of kids and grinding them down is not a new thing.
If voting machines are in use, there will never be an honest election again. EVER.
If you are going to utilize a voting machine during your chance to vote, you might as well not vote,
Off-topic, but important:
Few of us have seen the entire video of a US policeman getting gunned down by a Cartel member who was put in harm’s way by the Feds.
It’s beyond chilling, and it will PISS YOU OFF:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gTwYWE9uRV5Z/
Will you please stop spreading vote supressing conspiracy theories? Voting machines got used in Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, Louisiana and Alaska how did those elections go? Or how about Florida, Tennessee, and Wyoming? We lost in the electoral college and popular vote. You could either try to win next time or keep pretending we won in 2020 and keep spreading a message not to go vote (which you are doing explicitly here).
Want to turn North Carolina into the next Virginia? Keep doing what your doing, keep baselessly screaming to everyone to stay home on election day, you will turn turn every red state blue but I’m sure Chuck Schumer will greatly appreciate in fact your Chuck Schumer’s special little agent.
Those elections went fine, because they weren’t crucial states. We all knew which states were going to be crucial long before election day, and if you make two columns, the other one being where massive cheating was reported… well, why don’t you just do that? You’re not going to believe it until you do the homework.
And yet nobody has provided any actual proof of election wrong doing. Nut jobs like Powell kept harping on it, but never provided any real proof. In fact, now that she’s being sued for her statements her defense is, “Nobody should have believed my statements about Dominion and election fraud as they were only my opinions and not fact”. Yes really, that is her defense. So people either need to provide actual proof of fraud or just quit constantly harping on it as doing so won’t change a damn thing and is pointless.
FL wasn’t crucial?
Florida was crucial, but Democrats thought they had Miami-Dade sewn up, they didn’t expect so many Hispanic voters to jump ship and support Trump (and local Republicans for the House). That threw them for a loop. And is why counting stopped in the key states not long after the networks belatedly announced that Trump won Florida (they waited and waited even though it was clear that he had even before the ruby red Panhandle votes came in). They won’t be caught off-guard next time, though, so DeSantis is on top of it.
North Carolina is a crucial swing state, Florida is a crucial swing state, unfortunately going from California margins before 2016 to 9 in 2016 to just 6 last time Texas is a crucial swing state, Iowa and Ohio turned out to be red states but the Democrats very much thought them crucial swing states and invested in them accordingly.
Your claim that the voting machines are rigged is just a stupid conspiracy theory made by and for democrats to keep Republican voters at home. Just ask Stacey Abrams supporter and major proponent of it Lin Wood.
Keep it up, Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer need 2024 and 2022 respectively you are doing a wonderful job promoting elimination of accelerated math classes by telling Republicans (baselessly) to stay home. The Dominion lie doesn’t hurt Democrats it hurts Republicans while (rightly) making us look insane.
“Your claim that the voting machines are rigged is just a stupid conspiracy theory made by and for democrats to keep Republican voters at home….”
Demanding “voting machines” be put to pasture prior to the election is the goal. Or at the very least, monitoring the hell out of them, if that’s possible.
You seem to be content to surrender elections.
Danny, some people are talking about voting machines and whatever Kraken lunacy, but the fact is that everything about Election Night 2020 was . . . wrong, off, not normal. I was watching, and I am sure you were. Trump won Ohio, he won Iowa, and he won Florida (I knew he won Florida because the the ruby red panhandle hadn’t even weighed in when he ALREADY won Florida . . . but no outlets would call it for him. Bad sign.). Trump was winning. And then, suddenly, as I was watching, the news said these certain parts of certain states has stopped counting. A wWater main broke, they lied from Atlanta. Just because, the other key districts claimed they stopped counting. Supposedly. It was ten kinds of wrong to anyone who has ever watched election night returns.
Absolutely bogus. How do these KEY five districts in Democrat-controlled areas, those that JUST HAPPENED to eventually go all-in for Biden, just stop counting on Election Night? And ALL come back with all-Biden votes? No way do I buy that. NO way. Ever. This was a totally stolen election, and you can chirp and gripe about us saying so all day long. We are right, you are wrong.
Where we need to meet is in the fact that it’s done. Trump lost to Biden even though he actually won, and Biden is president even though I do not believe him to be legitimately so. So what? It’s done. We have what we have, let’s move on.
It’s only you lunatics who refuse to accept that the election was well and truly stolen who are acting the most butt-hurt. Why is that? Why is it so important to you that we don’t believe our lying eyes and instead believe your lies? Hmph. Won’t happen. We know what we saw, and we can’t unsee it. The fact, though, is that Biden has been installed as president. We get that. We will never ever say he won . . . beauase he did not. You seriously expect anyone to believe that doddering basement-dwielling child-sniffing rapist got 80 million votes, more than even Obama in ’08? That’s crazy, no one on earth belives that. Even Biden supoprters don’t believe that. Just stop with this crazy; you will never move a single person. Move on. We have.
Machine count ballots… not votes. They can’t tell a legal vote from one that isn’t.
What the hell are you talking about. That doesn’t even make sense. The “machines” count votes. Not ballots.
Stay home?
Earth to Danny: we are ativists here: we won’t wait till election day to get this sorted, witness the forensic analysis going on in Arizona.
You are an activist for Democrats telling Republicans to stay home. Your conspiracy theories about machines changing votes is one that could only be told while telling Republicans stay home.
Sorry if the truth hurts but telling people elections are rigged by voter fraud by definition means telling them stay home so I hope you loved the article here you are promoting an environment to make many more of them.
You know who doesn’t think the election was rigged?
Donald J Trump
If Trump thought them rigged he would have told a court that voter fraud swung an election proof or not, instead he never even made the allegation. Want to win 2022? Stop promoting a lie that keeps Republicans from voting, and allow Republicans to run on actual issues, this one (although Virginia is too far gone at this point) is a good one for example.
Nobody is brought to the Republican party by Republicans rejecting the results of 2020. Did Hillary rejecting 2016 make you vote Democrat?
I’m with you on this, Danny. Some on the right are so invested in fake uniparty nonsense that they discourage people from voting Republican. I do believe that Trump won in 2020 and will never be convinced otherwise, but I think it is a mistake to take that loss to mean that supporting Republicans is a problem.
Can the GOP do better? Yes. The question is how do we empower them to do so? My advice is to follow Trump as he leads the charge against the progressive Republicans who do not have our country’s best interests at heart. Taking over the GOP is Trump’s goal, and it’s the only viable option available.
That said, there will be uniparty believers who won’t vote for any Republican because they are ALL traitors and RINOS and yadda yadda. They will never change their mind, Danny.
“You know who doesn’t think the election was rigged?
Donald J Trump”
Wow, when you lie, you do it without a net.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/25/arizona-republicans-election-audit-cyber-ninjas
My husband started pre-algebra in 5th grade, Happily, he had a teacher who recognized his needs and got him a book that he could use to tech himself. He ended up at Nationals for the MathCount competition in 8th grade. Placed pretty high too, if I remember correctly, but not high enough to be remembered.
Bright students who are bored in class are more trouble than slow students bored in class. Just saying.
If math is too hard, so is civilization.
It took the blink of an eye for anti-intellectual woke intellectuals to implement regression to a more racist and dumb society.
Those who hate America must be laughing, as Americans, pretend “humanittarians” and hustler, spread their message for them and ruin the country from inside, as if they will replace it with something better. Too dumb to see this is the best humans have done so far, not the norm.
What was that again? 2+2=5?
2+2=5? What are you, Le Bron James-level dumb?
The answer is 6. (Or 57, if you’re Obama.)
I just had a vision of our future woke military. 1, 2, 5
What is the sum of two and two? The idiot who says that this is cultural I’m sure didn’t have any problem with it if the cultural quantity being added consists of property belonging to her.
Tell you what. I owe you two dollars and two dollars. Math is cultural, here’s three bucks.
Moron
They are trying to destroy American exceptionalism and competitiveness, just to protect feelings of black and brown morons. This is completely unacceptable.
I expect that there will be a run on tar and feathers, and more guns and ammo.
Talk abut the “ownership class” pulling up the ladder.
Eliminate accelerated math because it makes white people too smart is only a couple of steps away from “eliminate white people.”
Stupid kids will still struggle with maths, but now advanced students will get bored in class andor play up because the work is stupid level simple.
Until 2 + 2 officially = 5, at which point it will be deucedly tricky for the smart ones to continue to pretend.
“… Virginia’s Department of Education announced that it will be eliminating accelerated maths classes in all public schools as they strive for “equity.””
The Harrison Bergeron Equity Program where the motto is “None of us will be any better, stronger, faster, or smarter than the least of us.”
Because when everyone is stupid, no one will be.
I used to be flabbergasted at how Western Eurooe could commit suicide in so many ways. I never thought we would actually one-up them here.
If you want to know the difference between left and right just read this article.
But ’twas always thus.
Grade schools yoke the rocket scientists to the dullards, because “tracking” is racist… then they chide the (excruciatingly bored) “promising students” for turning in such low participation grades.
You are NOT to read ahead in your reading books! (Despite Clem wasting four minutes of your urgently energetic youth to correctly read the word “whole” out loud.) Your thirst to acquire new concepts at an appropriate rate is punishable!
Conform, or be cast out!
There’s only one way to get equality of outcome- handicap the successful in any way possible. Harrison Bergeron should be a warning, not a guide.
Why would anyone send a child to a public school. They have made it clear over the last year that they have absolutely zero interest in, and questionable ability to educate children.
I wouldn’t allow an indifferent roofer with questionable skills anywhere near my house, why would I care less for a child.
Do not be fooled. This program means that no one will learn anything. My wife spent a career teaching HS Math in NY City, every course, but mostly advanced level, like AP Calculus. She told me that “Foundational Concepts” will be nearly worthless. How could it not be if a foundational concept has to be that 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
The ONLY solution to the poor and declining public education in this country is for the money to follow the student. Competition would put the worst schools out of business and drive up the quality of the curriculum.
Incidentally, my grandchildren went to a K-8 Catholic school this year, full-time, regular hours, all day every day – in a state where public elementary schools were lucky to be open half time on half the days (“hybrid”), and closed altogether on many days.
The money should follow the student. From the parents’ pocketbook to the school of choice. Paying it to bureaucrats who skim off an inflated salary, then getting back pennies, is not fair
You also know full well that for a school to “qualify” to receive funds that follow the student, those schools will be required to teach CRT, enviro-nonsense, and feminism. The final nail in the coffin is: they must admit the D’Shauns and the L’Oreals and put them in the same classrooms as the kids who can learn.
Right back to square one.
Cool. I’m pretty sure that acceleration is the second derivative of kind of distance.
Hoe the hell are those unaccelerated folks ever going to get a rocket to Mars?
Isaac had the math to do it, just not the technological. We have the technology, but without the math, we can’t do it.
Go Chinese!
Desert Storm/Fort Hood
My baby brother, a captain, was charged with helping to train soldiers to prepare, I guess using certain weapons, camouflage, keeping sand from collapsing tents.
The people he was trying to train couldn’t read the manuals. They had to supply them with comic books. I don’t mean diagrams and flow charts and such that help in comprehending, They couldn’t read those either. They just could t read.
They had so skill in that direction, they were helpless without the comic books, and he never explained to me if those people in combat ever new a damn thing but shoot, cock, reload and shoot.
Not that new…. In 1967 the Army had maintenance manuals in comic book format. Some shapely Al Capp Daisy Mae lookalike would be telling us the part number, replacement frequencies, etc, etc via speech balloons just like in the old comics like Pogo or Terry and the Pirates.
My uncle said the AAF taught him math (algebra and trig) in 1941 in navigator school. (He flew in B-17s) His point that almost everyone could learn math if properly taught and motivated..
“Kids, your previous math teacher, Mr. Smith, who said two plus two equals four, has been replaced. Please meet your new teacher, Mr. O’Brien, who says two plus two equals five.” (An announcement from the principal, Mr. Orwell.)
“Kids, your previous math teacher, Mr. Smith, who said two plus two equals four, has been replaced. Please meet your new teacher, Mr. O’Brien, who says two plus two equals five.” (An announcement from the principal, Mr. Orwell.)
And Wm. Butler Yeats (from “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”):
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
TEACHER — Johnny, is that a parabola you are drawing?
7TH GRADER — No Ms. Jones. I was trying to draw the LBGTQ logo you taught us about last week.
TEACHER — Good. Because if that were a parabola, I’d have to send you to the Principal’s Office.
But secretly, Johnny knows it is a picture of God frowning.
So, what this really means is that Virginia is renewing it’s Jim Crow program of giving African-Americans in the public schools an inferior education. The only difference is that today’s racists are willing to accept some collateral damage to white and other children. Why is Virginia such a cesspool of racism? Again?
“today’s racists are willing to accept some collateral damage to white and other children.”
The difference is that most white and Asian parents value education, in the city I grew up in, most black parents did not value education, in fact they and their children made it very clear that they distain education.
This is really about them trying to impose their indifference or out right hostility for education on others. Furthermore they want to destroy nuclear family structure, which is very important to our success.
Screw them and their shit culture.
Let’s dumb down all Americans!
Get rid of any dividing lines based upon ability.
No more reading groups 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Since Zoom has come to America’s schools, why not have one class for each grade and each state.
All California first graders will have the same teacher.
The is equity, correct?
Math is logic, and in direct conflict with making decisions based on feelings.
My son as a senior in a private school is doing linear algebra, a course that I took at Oberlin as a sophomore. It is almost like his parents took an interest in and fostered his educational opportunites Were he in the Portland Public Schools he would be addin numbers at best, when not fending off false anonymous allegations of sexual assault.
We have become biased.
Many of us keep stating 2 + 2 = 5 … over and over … which we clearly know is wrong. We must reverse our bias by claiming … 2 + 2 = 3 … only then will our inherent bias be countered.
I can see it now. A so-called “Problem Student” stubbornly insists that 2+2 does indeed equal 4.
Problem Student is then pulled from class and sent to take a remedial math class. Said student reports to room 101, and meets his new “teacher”, Mr. O’Brien.
The thing is, those who want to learn will find ways to do so. I remember learning basic calculus from a book called “Learn Calculus in Two Weeks.” It wasn’t exactly rigorous, but it did the job. I think it cost 25 cents at the used bookstore (and the owner was probably pleased to get anything at all for it).
Today it’s a whole lot easier, as just about anything you might wish to learn can be found on the Internet.
Of course, none of this will provide you with a credential. Educational credentials have become absurdly costly (even as the assumption that they imply the bearer actually knows something has been deprecated). But a huge smorgasbord of education has become available to all, and at essentially no cost.
Other than the time to find it, and perseverance to make use of it.
Does anyone have the actual text of the VA law? Has anyone checked to ensure that public school parents are not prohibited from arranging for their kids to study accelerated math outside school, that teachers are not ordered to assign an F to any student who appears bored or otherwise obviously already knows the material, and that private schools are not required to dumb down math — all in the name of not allowing subversion of the new curriculum goals?
This is a glass-half-empty situation. Suppose you meet two people: One is making Bearnaise sauce for his steak needs a sprig of fresh tarragon to make it perfect. The other is hungry and struggling to stay fed. You have enough money to buy the tarragon for the one or a sandwich for the other, but not both. Which do you do?
The kids who are struggling in math need the resources more.
I’m glad my grandson is in 9th Grade in Florida, where he can take classes for college credit and his special education brothers get the education they need. It is not an either or situation!