If everything had gone according to plan, California would have approved new guidelines this month for math education in public schools.
But ever since a draft was opened for public comment in February, the recommendations have set off a fierce debate over not only how to teach math, but also how to close the racial and socioeconomic disparities in achievement that persist at every level of math education.
The California guidelines, which are not binding, could overhaul the way many school districts approach math instruction. The draft rejected the idea of naturally gifted children, recommended against shifting certain students into accelerated courses in middle school and tried to promote high-level math courses that could serve as alternatives to calculus, such as data science or statistics.
The draft also suggested that math should not be colorblind and that teachers could use lessons to explore social justice.
The battle over math comes at a time when education policy has become entangled in bitter partisan debates. The Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, seized on those issues to help propel him to victory Tuesday. Now, Republicans are discussing how these education issues can help them in the midterm elections next year.
Testing results regularly show that math students in the United States are lagging behind those in other industrialized nations. And within the country, there is a persistent racial gap in achievement. According to data from the civil rights office of the Education Department, Black students represented about 16% of high school students but 8% of those enrolled in calculus during the 2015-16 school year. White and Asian students were overrepresented in high-level courses.
For now, the revision process has reached a sort of interlude: The draft is being revised before another round of public comment, and it will not be until late spring, or maybe summer, that the state’s education board will decide whether to give its stamp of approval.
But even after that, districts will be free to opt out of the state’s recommendations.
In other words, the conversation is far from over.
“We’ve had a really hard time overhauling math instruction in this country,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of California’s board of education. “We cannot ration well-taught, thoughtful mathematics to only a few people. We have to make it widely available. In that sense, I don’t disagree that it’s a social justice issue.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .