To be sure, schools should be teaching citizens enough about statistics and data to follow the news and make educated financial and health decisions. Data literacy would be a better name for the most widely taught high-school data-science classes, which were developed by UCLA’s statistics department and my own university’s Graduate School of Education. The ability to do actual data science rests on math skills that have been taught for eons. It has applications in industries as varied as health care, retail, and, yes, food-supply logistics. In private industry and higher ed, data science describes a powerful synthesis of computer science, mathematics, and statistics that seeks to extract insights from large data sets. But the course name is something of a misnomer. The CMF pitches relatively new courses, branded as “data science,” both as an alternative to a second year of algebra and as an entry point into fast-growing career fields. Without overtly saying so, California is building off-ramps from that kind of math. A data scientist at a company that makes decisions about how and when to store, freeze, and transport food once told me that he and his crew “could not do our jobs” without fluency in areas of college-level math that require previous mastery of the basics. Such a degree is, in turn, the price of entry for jobs not only in the sciences and Silicon Valley but also in a number of seemingly distant fields. A solid grounding in math from high school-which traditionally has included two years of algebra, a year of geometry, and then, for more advanced students, other coursework leading up to calculus-is a prerequisite for a four-year college degree in data science, computer science, economics, and other quantitative fields. In my position at Stanford, I’ve heard from people around the country about the math preparation necessary to attain a variety of degrees and succeed in a range of careers. Armed with trendy buzzwords and false promises of greater equity, California is promoting an approach to math instruction that’s likely to reduce opportunities for disadvantaged students-in the state and wherever else educators follow the state’s lead. Even so, the version ultimately adopted by the State Board of Education is likely to distort math instruction for years to come. The CMF is meant only to guide local districts, but in practice it influences the choices they make about what and how to teach. But neither paper says anything about math education. The first chapter, for example, cited two articles to claim that “the highest achieving people have more interconnected brains,” implying that this has something to do with learning math. The document tried hard to convince readers that it was based on a serious reading of neuroscience research. The document cited research that hadn’t been peer-reviewed justified sweeping generalizations by referencing small, tightly focused studies or even unrelated research and described some papers as reaching nearly the opposite conclusions from what they actually say. Sometimes, as I pored over the CMF, I could scarcely believe what I was reading. When California released a revised draft of the math framework last year, I decided someone should read the whole thing, so I dove in. I have been the director of undergraduate studies in math at Stanford University for a decade. I am a professional mathematician, a graduate of the public schools of a middle-class community in New York, and the son of a high-school math teacher. ![]() Unfortunately, the sheer size of the sprawling document discouraged serious public scrutiny. The document also made a broad presumption that tweaking the content and timing of the math curriculum, rather than more effective teaching of the existing one, was the best way to fix achievement gaps among demographic groups. That draft explicitly promoted the San Francisco Unified School District’s policy of banishing Algebra I from middle school-a policy grounded in the belief that teaching the subject only in high school would give all students the same opportunities for future success. ![]() At the time, news reports highlighted features of the CMF that struck me as dubious. In 2021, the state released a draft of the California Mathematics Framework, whose authors were promising to open up new pathways into science and tech careers for students who might otherwise be left behind. ![]() When I decided to read every word of California’s 1,000-page proposal to transform math education in public schools, I learned that even speculative and unproved ideas can end up as official instructional policy.
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