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California students can rise to algebra standard
STORY TOOLS 
More from PulseRe: your July 11 editorial, "Hard-to-solve math problem":
I firmly believe that the state Board of Education acted in the best interest of all of California's students. The board, as it has many times in the past, made the decision to raise the bar for our students in an effort to better prepare them for the future.
Was this an easy decision? No. The board spent months looking at ways to get California into compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act and develop a testing system that assessed our eighth-graders on grade-level standards.
The board, as well as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others in the education community, believe that a single test and not a two-tiered system was the best option to achieve NCLB compliance regarding California's eighth-grade math test.
This sends the message that there is a clear standard for California students, and that they will be assessed at that standard. That standard is Algebra 1.
Will this be an easy task? No. We all agree that there are things that must be done over the next three years, including building an infrastructure to ensure the success of our students.
Our students have always risen to challenges like these, and we are already a national leader in the percentage of our students taking algebra — more than half.
Schwarzenegger has said he's committed to prioritizing and expanding the resources necessary to achieve the standards of excellence California deserves. I know we are all committed to working together moving forward to make this ambitious goal a reality.
We owe it to our students.
— David Long, Ph.D., of Sacramento is California secretary of education.
Posted by ConcernedResident on July 20, 2008 at 9:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
And yet nobody stopped to think if NCLB is the best way to do things. Did you ever talk with teachers who are still teachers? I'm not talking about people who once had a credential and left the profession years ago, but actually talked with middle and high school teachers? Does anyone else find it odd that this was written by a non-math teacher. It was written by some bureaucrat in Sacramento who doesn't have any idea what good math instruction looks like.
All students are not ready to take a regular one-year algebra 1 course in 8th grade; and he makes my point when he says, "and we are already a national leader in the percentage of our students taking algebra — more than half." Why is he not bragging about the percentage of students passing algebra 1? Because most people in Sacramento and Washington believe that the students simply have to be in the class to learn the material. They do not care about students learning and being successful, they would rather put all students in algebra 1 in the 8th grade and then claim that they achieved their goal.
And the sad part is that the bureaucrats will not be punished and the teachers will not be punished, it will be the students punished, doomed to repeat an Algebra 1 class because they do not have the foundational skills necessary for successful completion.
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