Thank you for calling Elizabeth’s voicemail in response to SFUSD’s new eighth- grade Algebra-1-only-with-Math 8 policy. Your call is very important to us, so please listen to the following options before making your selection.

To express your frustration with the new math policy, press 1.

To express your sense of déjà vu, press 2.

To underscore your sense of déjà vu, press 2 again.

To express despair over the policy, press 3.

To express your eternal rage over the policy, please stay on the line so you can scream into the void.

Policy in public education is always a juggling act, but in the case of SFUSD’s latest doubling-up demand for Algebra 1 and Math 8 in eighth grade, the district is not juggling the community’s interests effectively or equitably.

Educational policy 101

A solid educational policy always needs to balance three distinct and sometimes competing interests: (1) individual student readiness to progress; (2) developmental appropriateness; and (3) institutional practicality. No single factor is absolute, and no factor can be ignored. So the real challenge is to find a livable balance among these factors that best serves our students’ needs.

Oh, and one more thing — good policy also requires intellectually honest reasoning.

So let’s start with the issue of operational constraints.

Operational constraints

Everyone knows that SFUSD has resource constraints. Algebra 1 is no exception. In middle school math, it’s reasonable for a district to decide that it will progress up to Algebra 1, but no further. Beyond that point, staffing and scheduling just aren’t operationally practical.

Because we all agree we have limits, we should set a meaningful ceiling to reach that goal. Choosing Algebra 1 as a ceiling for middle school math gives our students an ambitious and worthwhile goal, while also ensuring that we adults can afford to get as many students as possible over that finish line.

Not only is this a defensible position, but it’s also the intellectually and morally honest one. It points us all democratically in the same direction — namely, preparing our students for Algebra 1. And it does so without preventing anybody from getting there.

But there are also developmental constraints to consider.

Developmental constraints

Middle school is a crucial period for social development, and whatever you might think about your own little darling’s inarguably impeccable social skills, the research loudly confirms that all young adolescents need age-appropriate peer interaction and support for developing collaboration skills. These skills include listening (!), following instructions, and fitting into rules-based systems whose rules you did not choose. Most noneducators underestimate how much energy we , as a community of educators in middle schools, expend on developing the noncognitive skills necessary to prepare very young adolescents to survive and thrive in high school and beyond.

With these constraints in mind, it is reasonable for a public school district to set policies that do not accelerate students to the point that they become isolated from their age-appropriate peer group or placed in environments where the social and emotional demands of the situation exceed their developmental readiness.

And here’s where SFUSD’s policy isn’t entirely honest.

SFUSD’s justification for suppressing advancement is based on an ideological argument, such as the claim that allowing students to accelerate is inequitable, but the new eighth-grade math policy is a bait-and switch.

There’s a difference between a constraint policy — one that sets a ceiling based on practical or developmental concerns and a suppression policy — one that slows students down or prevents them from reaching the ceiling. In SFUSD’s case, the justification for suppressing advancement is always based on an ideological argument, such as, say, the claim that allowing students to accelerate is inequitable.

That’s why SFUSD parents feel like the new eighth-grade math policy is playing a bait-and-switch — because that’s exactly what it’s doing.

Honest policy is transparent

It is reasonable and realistic in public education policy to set a ceiling  as long as this is done in a manner that is consistent and transparent.

An honest ceiling is set based on real operational or developmental limits. Within that ceiling, students should be allowed to progress without additional hindrances or obstacles. A district that is being transparent with families about its constraints is directing the community’s institutional energies toward getting all over the finish line.

But what SFUSD keeps doing is neither honest nor transparent.

What cost does a student pay for this kind of ideologically-motivated suppression policy?

When SFUSD forces an appropriately prepared student to take Math 8 (a math course whose content they can demonstrate mastery of) simultaneously with Algebra 1 (being proposed only as an elective), that is imposing a suppression policy, not a constraint.

It’s imposing a penalty against a student for reasons that cannot be honestly defended as either operational or developmental. In fact, the policy also fails the honest equity test in at least two different ways: it’s using developmental or operational language to conceal its true ideological intent, and it’s penalizing a student who is ready to progress by coercing them into doubling their math load rather than being placed into Algebra 1.

Cognitive energy, like time, is a finite resource, and requiring a student to use their cognitive energies in a course that doesn’t challenge them is what unmasks the real intent of the policy.

SFUSD suffers from an addiction to suppression policies. As an institution, it continuously seeks ways to siphon off energy into suppression and obstruction of individual learning, even if that means blocking well-prepared students from underrepresented communities who have achieved their own level of readiness through their own independent efforts.

That’s the opposite of equity.

A better and more honest way forward

And so rather than simply administering an equitable readiness test — such as California’s own gold-standard MDTP Algebra 1 readiness test to assess individual students’ proficiency to take Algebra — SFUSD will go to the ends of the Earth to impose its own arbitrary conditions for preventing progress, even if that means flirting with violations of the terms of its legal settlements or the California Math Placement Act of 2015. 

This is why our city passed Proposition G two years ago with 82 percent of our votes.

And this is also why since 2014, SFUSD parents have been forced to embrace a sprawling patchwork quilt of math doubling-up options that enable them to work around the district’s ideological suppression tactics, even though San Franciscans have loudly and clearly expressed our frustration with this kind of ideologically driven and intellectually dishonest approach.

Enough, already

It’s time for SFUSD’s leadership to break its addiction to coercive social engineering experiments in middle school and high school. And it’s time for us to demand that SFUSD leadership focus instead on boosting our students’ skill-based foundations starting in Traditional Kindergarten so they are ready to take advantage of middle school and high school opportunities to become college and career ready.

San Francisco’s students deserve an eighth-grade math placement policy that is balanced, flexible, and honest.

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