California Math Curriculum Emphasizes Woke Politics

I comment on education policy for a living, and school closures notwithstanding, it is hard for me to think of a school policy of more wide-ranging mediocrity and damaging counterproductivity than California’s adoption of a new mathematical framework. Last week, the California State Board of Education voted to adopt the new curricular standards for the 2023 school year.

The chief deputy superintendent, Mary Nicely, praised the “rigorous” and “high quality math instruction” that this framework will supposedly foster. In reality, it is little more than a galling example of the overt inclusion of progressive politics into the classroom. It is, in effect, a curriculum that removes math from math class.

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Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

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I comment on education policy for a living, and school closures notwithstanding, it is hard for me to think of a school policy of more wide-ranging mediocrity and damaging counterproductivity than California’s adoption of a new mathematical framework. Last week, the California State Board of Education voted to adopt the new curricular standards for the 2023 school year.

The chief deputy superintendent, Mary Nicely, praised the “rigorous” and “high quality math instruction” that this framework will supposedly foster. In reality, it is little more than a galling example of the overt inclusion of progressive politics into the classroom. It is, in effect, a curriculum that removes math from math class.