We recently did a VIP post on the architect of "equity-based algebra." Jo Boaler is "a Stanford professor of math education who's arguably most responsible for the new California Math Framework — a set of curriculum recommendations that advocate against teaching algebra to most of the state's gifted middle-schoolers in the name of equity."
We've done a lot of posts about how math is racist. We've done posts about how showing your work on a math problem is imposing "whiteness." A Boston-area school eliminated advanced math in middle school in the name of equity. Seattle's K-12 "Math Ethnic Studies Framework" had as one of its themes the "Power of Oppression."
Speaking of Seattle, Jason Rantz reports that Seattle Public Schools have canceled a gifted program over a lack of racial diversity.
NEW: Seattle Public Schools cancels gifted program because it had too many white students. When black parents pushed back, they were called “tokens.” https://t.co/JFlyLMYGGR
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) April 2, 2024
Rantz reports:
Outraged more by the success of white and Asian students than by the untapped potential of Black and Hispanic pupils, progressives would rather drag achievers down than elevate everyone. These self-proclaimed saviors boast on social media about tackling inequities, oblivious to the harm they inflict. Indeed, the program to replace the HCC [Highly Capable Cohort program], and be implemented in every classroom, ensures that gifted students will be unchallenged, struggling students will escape the attention they deserve and teachers will be overwhelmed. In other words, everyone will be equitably harmed.
…
But parents, including those who are Black, Asian and Hispanic, argued against closing them down. They argued that SPS should work harder to identify minority students who are eligible for HCC, rather then kill the program entirely.
One father pleaded that the Seattle School Board “consider the disservice you would be doing to the minorities that are already in the HCC program.” He argued that the gifted program “does more for Black children, particularly Black boys, than it does for their peers.”
But the extremist Seattle School Board was unmoved.
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This is the kind of thinking that prevents students with an aptitude for math from taking advanced courses before junior year — up until then, everyone follows the same equitable curriculum.
Here's your equity, @mcuban
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) April 2, 2024
This is quietly happening all over the country. And in plenty of deep red states too.
— Janine Curran (@janinereturns) April 2, 2024
Go ahead and check: more likely than not your state school board is asking for racial quota data from gifted programs and pressuring districts to improve gifted “equity” or disband entirely.
Bring all our kids to the lowest common denominator
— Eliza Johnson (@elizjohns13) April 2, 2024
But they won't understand the reference with failing math proficiency
The next generation is being held back by the people entrusted to protect and guide them. It's a malicious tactic in the name of equity.
— Warren Wilhelm (@War_Wilhelm) April 2, 2024
We're sprinting toward the Dark Ages. It's like everything we should have learned from those who came before us has been removed from all books and replaced with pictures of non-binary creatures with multiple pronouns.
— newmanian (@newmanian2) April 2, 2024
And we wonder why nothing works anymore.
Public schools must be defunded. They’re making it easier for everyone to see that.
— Kasey Freeman (@digitalspaz) April 2, 2024
Tokens to what? Brilliant kids? Whoever used that language should be removed from society.
— heafly (@heafly1) April 2, 2024
So crazy that the side that called everything and everyone racist for political capital was actually the racist side.
— jom (@bearsjohn1772) April 2, 2024
We had hope in the after math of the Harvard plagiarism scandal that math at least would be the last refuge against indoctrination. But this is the equality of outcome that Vice President Kamala Harris championed: no gifted program for anyone.
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