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  • California faces big challenges to implement new math guidelines

    California faces big challenges to implement new math guidelines


    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    After a contentious road to approve a new set of statewide guidelines on teaching students math, California officials must still figure out how to support school districts with implementation.

    The 2023 Math Framework, which the State Board of Education passed in July, is a 1,000-page document that details what many state and education officials accept as the best practices to teach mathematics. Although not everyone agreed and controversies arose during the four years of work it took to reach approval, math experts and organizations across the state are beginning to have conversations about what a statewide rollout could look like.

    The state hasn’t provided funding for implementation, which is typical, said Mike Torres, director of curriculum frameworks and instructional resources for the Department of Education. Historically, any framework rollout isn’t funded and is implemented with outside collaborators who are experts in the topic. For the most part, district officials must find ways to fund professional development on their own.

    “This situation with the mathematics framework is not different,” Torres said. “There isn’t any specific funding where we can pay experts to help us participate in webinars … or put on events.”

    It’s unclear why California historically hasn’t set aside money to help districts with implementation once new guidelines are passed. But that could change. 

    During a press conference last month, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said he intends to introduce legislation for funding for professional development for those teaching math and reading. The funds could be up to $500 million, he said. 

    Torres said the California Department of Education would need to find other ways to offset costs if events will be held. It’s too early to know what kind of rollout could or will happen. Torres and his team have had three meetings with groups they work with to talk about a framework rollout, he said. 

    There are many organizations collaborating with the California Department of Education on implementing the math framework, including the California Mathematics Project, California County Superintendents Curricular and Improvement Support Community (CISC), California Math Council, California Teachers Association, and County Offices of Education. 

    During other framework rollouts, districts have sent teams of teachers and administrators to training and then had them relay information to the rest of the staff, said Kyndall Brown, one of the framework authors and executive director of the California Mathematics Project – one of the state’s partners. It’s something that could be replicated during a math framework rollout. 

    Even if there are conferences teachers can attend, one professor says she isn’t a huge fan. 

    “One day of hearing these ideas doesn’t necessarily translate into having a balanced curriculum – at all,” said Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project. “It doesn’t necessarily create change in the classroom.”

    To create changes that will increase students’ proficiency in math, teachers need trainers who will work with them in and outside of classrooms on a consistent basis, Hyde said, which is work she does with her colleguues. 

    School districts do have pots of funding that could be used toward professional development, Brown said, such as special education funds or funds from the Local Control Funding Formula.

    However, a $50 million math, science, and computer science professional learning grant the governor allocated in the 2022 budget could help to fund professional development. Some allocations have been given to the County Offices of Education, Torres said, and the offices handle how the money is used.

    The timing of the grant worked out perfectly with the beginning of a math framework rollout, said Ellen Barger, an associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction at the Santa Barbara County Office of Education. Other grant funds are being used to support rural school districts in particular and the most recent grant will help to continue building coherence across all counties and to fill gaps. 

    “The framework is one of the tools that’s helping us achieve a vision of high-quality 

    mathematics for every California student, and we are building structures to bring people together to build knowledge and skills to operationalize that vision in every county, district, and community,” Barger said.

    Equity in implementation

    As of this school year, there will be 939 school districts in the state that will have to find resources to support educators in teaching under the new guidelines, which align with the California Common Core State Standards for Mathematics that were passed a decade ago. 

    How to make that equitable will be a difficult task. 

    Each school district has different needs, unique populations, and different levels of resources. For example, a district with more than 50,000 students will typically have more resources and staff to support professional development. A district with less than 50 kids might just have one staffer who is taking on multiple roles.

    There are some school districts that haven’t yet finished implementing the common core standards, Brown said. The common core standards detail what students in each grade level need to master.

    “There was no rollout of the 2013 framework (common core standards),” Brown said. “You had county offices and math project sites doing what we could, but we’re running into teachers who still don’t know about the elements of the common core standards.”

    There are also always new teachers coming into schools who will need to be trained, Brown said. “We have years and years worth of content.”

    But at least some colleges of education at California universities have had many aspects of the math framework already embedded in their curricula for the last decade. Professors at UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside all spoke about how ideas in the framework have been used in their classrooms and the long history of controversy over how to teach math.

    Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project, works with districts to train teachers on how to teach math and students in the credential program. For years, she said, the focus has been on student engagement, understanding motivation, including student identities in lessons, and building healthy classrooms – all included in the math framework. 

    Most teachers teach the way they were taught, Hyde said, and learned shortcuts to solving math problems. It results in current and future teachers not understanding the mathematics behind what they’re teaching. 

    During professional development training, Hyde and other Irvine professors make sure educators begin to understand the concepts behind what they are teaching, she said. They spend time co-planning lessons, observing lessons being taught, and relating what they are teaching back to the common core standards.

    “We need to make sure teachers understand the math and how to teach the math first and then it’s easier to help them consider – ‘How do I make this more engaging? How do I connect this back to the kid’s prior experience?’” Hyde said. 

    If teachers don’t understand the content “I fear they will just have a series of super fun, engaging lessons that kids feel super good about but they’re not actually mastering mathematics,” Hyde said. “I feel in turn is going to really increase the achievement gaps that we already have that are horrible in California.”

    The professional development work UC Irvine is doing has helped the two dozen districts they work with, but there are still many districts that don’t have this kind of support in place. 

    It will take years until every student in California is exposed to a way of learning math that follows the guidelines in the framework and Brown says, “Something needs to change.”

    Only about 35% of California students met or exceeded math standards this year, only about 1% higher than the previous year. Smarter Balanced Assessment results were lower for Black and brown students. 

    About 17% of African-American students and nearly 23% of Hispanic students in the state

    met or exceeded math standards in 2023, which was only about a 1% increase from the prior year. Brown called the results “horrendous.” 

    “It’s more than obvious the current system is failing too many people,” Brown said. “It’s long overdue – time to make some changes so we can see some different outcomes.”

    A Long Way to Go

    The final version of the framework was posted last month on the California Department of Education website. Officials are still working on a professionally edited version of the framework, which can take about a year, Torres said.

    Although school districts have access to the final version of the framework, it will still take up to two more years to have math materials that are vetted and approved by the state board that align with the framework, Torres said. Some publishers have likely started to write new materials. 

    The earliest the State Board of Education will kick off an adoption of math instructional materials is January – when the board approves a schedule of hearings. Districts aren’t required to use the materials approved by the state board, Torres said, but it’s helpful for implementation. 

    School districts also don’t have deadlines for when the framework needs to be implemented, Brown said. Every district is on its own timeline.

    Barger said a rollout isn’t an event, but an ongoing process of continuous improvement that could take the next six or seven years.





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  • Advanced algebra, data science and more: UC rethinks contested issues of high school math

    Advanced algebra, data science and more: UC rethinks contested issues of high school math


    Credit: JeswinThomas / Pexels

    Next month, a panel of University of California professors in the sciences and math will give their recommendations on the contentious issue of how much math high school students should know before taking a college-qualifying course in data science. Its answer could influence future course offerings and admissions requirements in math for UC and CSU.

    “There’s a tension between the interest in adhering to math standards and ensuring students learn math and also recognizing the changes that are happening in the uses of math in industry and the world in general,” said Pamela Burdman, executive director of Just Equations, a nonprofit that promotes policies that prepare students with quantitative skills to succeed in college. 

    “How UC resolves this issue will have a bearing on that, and the signals that UC sends to high schools about what is and isn’t approved will have a big impact on what this next generation of students learns.”

    The issue has embroiled California’s higher education decision-makers, and it mired proponents and opponents of California’s new TK-12 math framework in an acrimonious debate earlier this year.

    Advocates have cited the appeal of introductory data science as a way to broaden the boundaries of math to students who were turned off by it.  Traditionalists – STEM professors and professionals – countered that courses like introductory data science that include little advanced math content create the illusion that students are prepared for college-level quantitative work while discouraging them from pursuing STEM majors.

    Separate from this immediate question, a second group of UC, CSU and community college math professors is revisiting a more fundamental question: How much math knowledge is essential for any high school graduate with college aspirations, and separately for those interested in pursuing STEM, the social sciences or majors needing few quantitative skills?

    For the past two decades, the answer was cut-and-dried — and uniform. The CSU and UC defined foundational high school math as the topics and concepts covered by the three math courses – Algebra I, Geometry, and Advanced Algebra, which is Algebra II — that both systems require students to pass for admission. 

    With the state’s adoption of the Common Core math standards for K-12 in 2010, the options expanded to include Integrated I, II and III, which cover the same Common Core topics in a different order. Both UC and CSU encourage students to take a fourth year of math, and most do.

    The debate has centered on Algebra II. For future science, engineering and math majors, Algebra II is the gateway to the path from trigonometry and Pre-calculus to Calculus, which they must eventually take. But for the majority of non-STEM-bound students, Algebra II can be a slog: difficult, abstract and irrelevant to the college plans.

    Despite a general agreement that high school math should be more relatable and relevant, there is intense disagreement on the fix.

    New course offerings in the burgeoning fields of data science and statistics “present new ways to engage students. At the same time, they can foster the quantitative literacy — or competency with numerical data — that math courses are intended to provide,” Burdman wrote in a commentary in EdSource. “They have the potential to improve equity and ensure that quantitative literacy is a right, not a privilege.”  

    But with 17% of Black children, 23% of Hispanic children and 23% of low-income children scoring proficient in the latest Smarter Balanced tests, the need for effective and engaging math instruction must begin long before high school. The new TK-12 math framework, approved in July after multiple revisions and four years of debate, forcefully calls for fundamental changes in math instruction. 

    “Arguments about what content should be included in high school mathematics fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room: We haven’t yet figured out how to teach the concepts of algebra well to most students,” wrote psychology professors Ji Song of CSU Los Angeles and James Stigler of UCLA in an Edsource commentary.

    Committees of faculty senates of both UC and CSU have restated that Algebra II, along with geometry and Algebra I, provide the skills and quantitative reasoning needed for college work, in whatever paths students eventually choose.  

    “College and career readiness expectations include completion of these sequences or their equivalent that cover all of the Common Core standards,” the CSU Math Council wrote in a January resolution.

    But in 2020, the influential UC academic senate, which is authorized to oversee course content for admissions, sent a critical mixed message. In a statement, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools or BOARS invited proposals for a broader range of math courses for consideration that would enable students to “complete certain mathematics courses other than Algebra II or Mathematics III in their junior year of high school to fulfill the minimum admissions requirement.” BOARS said it saw the expanded options “as both a college preparation and equity issue.”

    Proponents of data science seized the opportunity, launching an end-run around what they perceived to be the inflexibility of math professors to change.

    New courses

    BOARS oversees policy, but the High School Articulation Unit, a small office in the UC President’s Office, does the evaluating and vetting of the tens of thousands of courses that course developers and high school teachers submit annually for approval. The office began authorizing new data science courses as meeting or “validating” the content requirements of Algebra II and Integrated III. The validation exemption presumed that the new course would build upon concepts and standards that students had covered in previous courses — in this case, Algebra II — or would be covered in the new course.

    Subsequently, 368 data science and related courses received approval for 2022-23 and 435 for 2023-24. Nearly all use one of a half-dozen or so data science curricula developed for high schools.

    There had been a precedent. As early as 2014, the UC had questionably validated statistics courses as satisfying Algebra II because they cover statistics standards that many Algebra II teachers frequently don’t get to, while not teaching other Algebra II content. However, extending validation to data science is more problematic since California has not established standards for the subject. As a result, there are no guidelines for what standards the courses should be teaching.

    A flaw in implementation or policy?

    In a detailed Nov. 12 letter to UC regents, Jelani Nelson, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and a leading critic of weakening math requirements through course substitution, put the blame not on policy changes but on the course-approval process. An Articulation Unit with a small staff, none of whom had a background in STEM, was overwhelmed, he wrote.

    Others agree. Rick Ford, professor emeritus and former chair of the department of mathematics at CSU Chico, said that what once was a rigorous process for course approval had become a “horrendous” pro-forma exercise, “primarily reliant on the fidelity of submitters” to follow BOARS guidelines.

    The oldest and most popular course, Introduction to Data Science, developed by UCLA statistics professor Robert Gould through funding from the National Science Foundation and used throughout Los Angeles Unified, covered only the statistics standards, not other content in Algebra II. The same was the case with another popular course validated for Algebra II, “Explorations in Data Science,” developed by YouCubed, a Stanford University research center.

    Most students who had taken Introduction to Data Science so far had taken Algebra II, so that was not a problem. But those who took it as juniors in lieu of Algebra II might find the course shut doors instead of opening them. Those who might later decide they want to major in biology, computer science, chemistry, neurology or statistics, all of which require passing Calculus, would find themselves struggling for lack of Algebra II; the CSU, meanwhile, no longer offers remediation courses in math.

    “You’re asking a 14- or 15-year-old kid to make a lifelong decision in the spring of sophomore year,” said Ford, who chaired the influential Academic Preparation and Education Programs Committee of the CSU academic senate. “Watering down content is creating a multitrack system instead of giving all students the greatest chance of success.”

    A backlash followed

    News that UC was approving the substitution of data science for third-year Common Core math frustrated the faculty of CSU, which has relied on BOARS and the UC faculty for policy decisions since the two systems agreed to common course requirements, known as A-G, in 2003. Approving coursework that does not meet Common Core standards “brought to light the complete lack of control that the CSU has over the A-G high school requirements that are used for admission to our system,” the CSU senate stated in a January resolution. It called for the academic senates of both systems “to explore establishing joint decision-making” over new courses and changes to the A-G standards.

    In July, during the lead-up to the anticipated approval of the final version of the updated California Math Framework by the State Board of Education, tensions came to a head. Thousands of STEM professionals and UC and CSU faculty had signed petitions sharply criticizing earlier drafts of the math guidelines. The proposed framework had discouraged districts from offering Algebra I in eighth grade, compounding the challenge of taking Calculus before high school graduation, while encouraging students to take data science over STEM professions that were described as less interesting and collaborative. One of the five authors of the drafts was Jo Boaler, a prominent professor of mathematics education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and co-founder of YouCubed.

    In the framework it adopted in July, the State Board of Education left it to districts to decide who should take Algebra in the eighth grade. The final version revised language conflating courses in data literacy, which all 21st-century students need, with math-intensive data science courses that, together with Calculus, would prepare students for a data science major in college. It also dropped a new third pathway for data science next to the traditional pathway leading to Calculus. 

    But the final framework hasn’t fully mollified critics, including Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at Lowell High in San Francisco and former software executive.

    “By encouraging students to abandon algebra before they’ve solidified their understanding, the (framework) makes it even more difficult for them to get back on that track — even more so now that our community colleges and CSUs have done away with remedial courses,” she wrote in an email. 

    “The only way we’re going to diversify STEM fields is to keep historically excluded young students on the algebraic thinking pathway just a little bit longer. That will give them the mathematical competencies they will need to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to pursue rigorous quantitative majors and careers.”

    Feeling the heat, BOARS hastily reversed positions on July 7 — days before the State Board meeting — revoking validation for meeting Algebra II requirements for all data science courses. And, in a letter to the State Board, BOARS Chair Barbara Knowlton requested wording changes to the proposed framework, which the board did, including deleting a diagram that showed data science as an option to sub for Algebra II.   

    “The data science courses that have to date been approved by UCOP’s high school articulation team appear not to have been designed as third- or fourth-year mathematics courses,” wrote Knowlton, a professor of psychology at UCLA.

    Ten days later, BOARS met again and clarified that there might be some exceptions for granting validation to those data science courses with “a prerequisite mastery of Algebra II content.” It also reiterated that the revocation of A-G credit would exempt students who are currently taking data science courses, with credit for Algebra II, or who had taken data science courses in past years.  

    “It’s been unfortunate that UC’s process of determining the rules has caused far more confusion than was needed,” said Burdman, the executive director of Just Equations.

    The minutes of the meeting revealed that BOARS members professed they didn’t know how the articulation unit in the President’s Office determined if courses could be substituted. Nor could they determine how many data science courses were designated as advanced math. The President’s Office said about 400 data science courses were being taught in California high schools.

    The minutes said that BOARS would appoint a working group, including professors of computer science, neuroscience, statistics and math, to clarify how to enforce the July 7 revocation vote, incorporate Algebra II as a course prerequisite, and determine the criteria for course validation.

    BOARS, whose meetings are not public,  hasn’t disclosed who’s in the group, although it includes no CSU faculty. The group has been meeting ahead of a December deadline so that BOARS can review and take action in January; only then will its recommendations be made public, Knowlton said in an interview. 

    There’s pressure to complete work in time for the next course cycle for the fall of 2024, starting in February, so that applicants know the new rules. “There is a concern among some people that if we don’t send this message quickly, there will be a proliferation of these courses,” she said.

    Knowlton hopes the work group will identify elements of algebra that are critical for student success and evaluate courses to see which ones don’t cover them. 

    “Some validated courses may leave out really very important foundational aspects of math, and we want to reiterate what those are,” she said. Course developers could choose to add concepts to qualify for validation for Algebra II; that’s what the developers of financial math have done. Or instead, they could offer courses like data science as advanced math in the fourth year of high school, with a prerequisite of Algebra II.

    Knowlton said BOARS is committed to equity in college admissions. But the challenge is balancing access and preparation, she said. “We want as much access as possible, yet it has to mean that students are prepared.”

    But Aly Martinez, the former math coordinator for San Diego Unified, is worried that efforts to create innovative and rigorous courses in data science and statistics will be swept aside if BOARS applies restrictions too broadly.

    After surveying students about their math interests, the district worked with the creators of CourseKata to turn its college statistics and data science course into two-year high school courses incorporating Algebra II standards and college and career pathway requirements. The courses can lead to Calculus for STEM majors; others can apply the knowledge to social science and other majors. The first-year course is popular and should be validated as satisfying Algebra II, she said.

    “There is momentum and excitement about this work,” said Martinez, who is now the director of math for the nonprofit Student Achievement Partners. “Those who are innovative should not be the ones getting hurt.”

    A fresh look at standards

    The second committee commissioned will take a broader and longer view of math content. Its members will include math professors from the CSU and community colleges, as well as UC, as a math subcommittee of a joint faculty body, the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates.

    Kate Stevenson, a math professor at CSU Northridge and member of the new workgroup, said, “It’s not our goal to rewrite the standards, but to emphasize what parts of the standards are really critical to all students’ success and which are critical to life sciences as opposed to engineers, physicists and chemists.”

    The committee will probably not recommend dropping math standards but could look at reorganizing or de-emphasizing them, she said.

    Few Algebra II teachers find time for statistics standards, she said. “So what would a third year look like with a better balance between statistics and algebraic skills? Could we repeat less of Algebra I if we did the integrated pathway?”  she asked. “Or what parts of the algebra curriculum could really belong in Pre-calculus rather than in Algebra II?”

    Although it is not the role of the committee, Stevenson said she thinks the Common Core standards deserve revisiting. “It’s not that I don’t like the standards. But it’s very unlikely the mathematics that we agreed to in 2013 is the mathematics that we think students should have in 2030.”

    Clarification: The article was updated Dec. 15 with the exact number of data science courses that the Articulation Unit of the UC Office of the President approved for 2022 and 2023; they were fewer than the article had implied.





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  • Bring the California spirit of innovation to math classrooms

    Bring the California spirit of innovation to math classrooms


    Students at Robbins Elementary work in groups during a math lesson about scale.

    Credit: Sydney Johnson

    The state of California is at the global forefront of technological innovation and artistic inspiration. It’s also a powerhouse economy in its own right, currently the fifth largest in the world. We might expect — we should expect — such a place to deliver a world-class education to the 6 million public school students in its charge.

    This is not the picture that emerges from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. These assessments found fewer than a quarter of California eighth graders performing at or above the “proficient” level in math. This represents both a decline from the state’s previous NAEP performance and a significant undershooting of the national average performance for eighth grade math.

    But the good news is that California is on the verge of a major education opportunity: The State Board of Education is scheduled to adopt new math curriculum in 2025, and high-quality instructional materials are a powerful, proven lever for improving student outcomes in math.

    The magnitude of this opportunity was made clear in a recent, California-focused report from the Center for Education Market Dynamics. My partners and I co-founded this nonprofit in 2020 to investigate, illuminate and help improve the murky national curriculum landscape. Our research indicates that 62% of California districts in our sample have in place a math curriculum from the state’s 2014 adoption list for elementary school, and 76% for middle school.

    The continued dominance of these curricula in California is not, on its face, a happy finding. It suggests that millions of the state’s most vulnerable students are saddled with past-generation math textbooks that do not reflect the important curriculum innovations and improvements of recent years. But it also means that state influence is real in California, and it’s big: many, many districts today, 10 years after the last adoption, are still waiting for that state signal to select new math curriculum — even though they don’t have to, as state adoption is nonbinding. California districts are ripe, ready, and hungry for state leadership on this front.

    State education leaders must leverage this upcoming adoption to vigorously encourage publishers to develop high-quality, innovative math curriculum for California’s public schools — and to relentlessly support its uptake and implementation in districts. In the decade since the last adoption, several big demographic shifts have accelerated in the state’s public schools, including an upsurge of English learners (students who are Hispanic/Latino now make up an outright majority, or 56%, of California public school students) and students experiencing poverty (60% of California public school students receive free and reduced-price meals). These students are not exceptional cases, but the mainstay and the heart of the California public school system. And they need the absolute best that the contemporary education market can deliver regarding math curriculum.

    What would that look like? We might see, for example, math curriculum that’s aligned to research-based quality criteria; that intentionally incorporates the best instructional practices for students learning English; that builds systematically underserved students’ executive functioning skills alongside their math skills; and that leverages leading-edge digital technology to engage students and provide just-in-time support to those who are struggling (disclosure: I’m on the boards of both AERDF and Zearn). There’s no shortage of brilliant research and development efforts happening in the world of math curriculum. And state education leaders in California are, right now, in the unique position to bring this innovation to bear in real ways on their students’ math experience.

    California must get this adoption right. Because when it comes to curriculum, what happens in California ultimately ripples across the country. The need is acute, nationwide, for more effective teaching and learning in math — for this generation of students to grow up without giving up on it. Better math curriculum will help us get there, and the state of California can help lead the way.

    •••

    Jeff Livingston is co-founder of the Center for Education Market Dynamics, a nonprofit K-12 market intelligence organization dedicated to improving academic outcomes for underserved students by expanding the adoption and use of high-quality teaching and learning solutions.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California poorly trains and supports teaching math, report concludes 

    California poorly trains and supports teaching math, report concludes 


    Teacher apprentice Ja’net Williams helps with a math lesson in a first grade class at Delta Elementary Charter School in Clarksburg, near Sacramento.

    Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • California leaders dismiss the criticism and methodology of the rankings.
    • And yet, graduate credentialing programs cram a lot in a year. 
    • Many teachers may struggle with the demands of California’s new math framework.

    In its “State of the States” report on math instruction published last week, the National Council on Teacher Quality sharply criticized California and many of its teacher certification programs for ineffectively preparing new elementary teachers to teach math and for failing to support and guide them once they reach the classroom.  

    “Far too many elementary teacher prep programs fail to dedicate enough instructional time to building aspiring teachers’ math knowledge — leaving teachers unprepared and students underserved,” the council said in its evaluation of California’s 87 programs that prepare elementary school teachers. “The analysis shows California programs perform among the lowest in the country.”

    The report’s call for more teacher math training and ongoing support coincides with the state’s adoption this summer of materials and textbooks for a new math framework that math professionals universally agree will be a heavy lift for incoming and veteran teachers to master. It will challenge elementary teachers with a poor grasp of the underpinnings behind the math they’ll be teaching. 

    Kyndall Brown, executive director of the California Mathematics Project based at UCLA, agrees. “It’s not just about knowing the content, it’s about helping students learn the content, which are two completely different things,” he said.

    And that raises a question: Does a one-year-plus-summer graduate program, which most prospective teachers take, cram too much in a short time to realistically meet the needs to teach elementary school math?

    California joined two dozen states whose math preparation programs were rated as “weak.” Only one state got a “strong” rating.
    Source: National Council on Teacher Quality, 2025 State of the States report

    Failing grades

    The council graded every teacher prep program nationwide from A to F, based on how many instructional hours they required prospective teachers to take in major content areas of math and in instructional methods and strategies.

    Three out of four California programs got an F, with some programs — California State University, Sacramento, and California State University, Monterey Bay — requiring no instructional hours for algebraic thinking, geometry, and probability, and many offering one-quarter of the 135 instructional hours needed for an A.

    But there was a dichotomy: All the Fs were given to one-year graduate school programs offering a multi-subject credential to teach elementary school, historically the way most new teachers in California get their teaching credential.

    On the other hand, many of the colleges and universities offering a teaching credential and a bachelor’s degree through an Integrated Undergraduate Teacher Credentialing Program got an A, because they included enough time to go into math instruction and content in more depth. For example, California State University, Long Beach’s 226 instructional hours, apportioned through all of the content areas and methods courses, earned an A-plus.

     The California State University rejects the recent grading from the National Council on Teacher Quality about our high-quality teacher training programs

    California State University

    Most of the universities that offer both undergraduate and graduate programs — California State University, Bakersfield; San Jose State University; California State University, Chico; California State University, Northridge, to name a few — had the same split: A for their undergraduate programs, F for their graduate credentialing programs.

    Most California teacher preparation programs have received bad grades in the dozen years that the council has issued evaluations. The state’s higher education institutions, in turn, have defended their programs and denounced the council for basing the quality of a program on analyses of program websites and syllabi.

    California State University, whose campuses train the majority of teachers, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which accredits and oversees teacher prep programs, issued similar denunciations last week.

     “The California State University rejects the recent grading from the National Council on Teacher Quality about our high-quality teacher training programs,” the CSU wrote in a statement. The council “relies on a narrow and flawed methodology, heavily dependent on document reviews, rather than on dialogue with program faculty, students and employers or a systematic review of meaningful program outcomes.”  

    The credentialing commission, in a more diplomatic response, agreed. The report “reflects a methodology that differs from California’s approach to educator preparation,” it said. “While informative, it does not fully capture the structure of California’s clinically rich, performance-based system.” 

    Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality for the past three years, dismissed the criticism as “a really weak critique.”

    “You can look at a syllabus and see what’s being taught in that class much in the same way that if you go to a restaurant and look at the menu to see what’s being served,” she said. “Our reviews are certainly a very solid starting place to know to what extent teacher preparation programs are well preparing future teachers to be effective in teaching.”

    It’s not just a problem in California.

    “When we compare the mathematics instructional hours between the undergrad and the graduate programs, often on the same campus, we saw on average that undergrads get 133 hours compared to just 52 hours at the graduate level. In both cases, it is not meeting the recommended and research-based 150 hours,” Peske said. 

    Part of the problem is that graduate programs usually don’t have enough time to instill future teachers with the content knowledge that they need.

    Heather Peske

    Whether or not examining website data is a good methodology, the disparities in hours devoted to math preparation between undergraduate and graduate programs raise an important issue. 

    True jacks of all trades, elementary teachers must become proficient in many content areas — social studies, English language arts, English language development for English learners, and science, as well as math. Add to that proficiency in emerging technologies, classroom management, skills for teaching students with disabilities, and student mental health: How can they adequately cover math, especially?

    “Part of the problem is that graduate programs usually don’t have enough time to instill future teachers with the content knowledge that they need,” Peske said. “California programs have to reckon with this idea that they’re sending a bunch of teachers into classrooms who have not demonstrated that they are ready to teach kids math.”

    Brown said, “There’s no way that in a one-year credential program that they’re going to get the math that they need to be able to teach the content that they’re responsible for teaching.”

    That was Anthony Caston’s experience. Before starting his career as a sixth-grade teacher at Foulks Ranch Elementary School in Elk Grove three years ago, Caston took courses for his credential in graduate programs at Sacramento State and the University of the Pacific. There wasn’t enough time to learn all he needed to teach the subject, he said. A few classes were useful, but didn’t get much beyond the third- or fourth-grade curriculum, he said.

    “I had to take myself back to school, reteach myself everything, and then come up with some teaching strategies,” Caston said. 

    Fortunately for him, veteran teachers at his school helped him learn more about Common Core math and how to teach it.

    The math content Brown refers to goes beyond knowing how to invert fractions or calculate the area of a triangle; it involves a conceptual understanding of essential math topics, Peske said. Only a deeper conceptual grasp will enable teachers to diagnose and explain students’ errors and misunderstandings, Peske said, and to overcome the math phobia that surveys show many teachers have.

    Ma Bernadette Salgarino, the president of the California Mathematics Council and a math trainer in the Santa Clara County Office of Education, acknowledges that many math teachers have not been taught the concepts behind the progression of the state’s math standards. “It is not clear to them,” she said. “They’re still teaching to a regurgitation of procedures, copy and paste. These are the steps, and this is what you will do.”

    Although a longtime critic of the council, Linda Darling-Hammond, who chaired California’s credentialing commission before becoming the current president of the State Board of Education, acknowledges that the report raises a legitimate issue.

    “Time is an important question,” she said. “It is true that having more time well spent — the ‘well spent’ matters — could make a difference for lots of people in learning lots of subjects, including math.”

    Darling-Hammond faults the study, however, for not factoring in California’s broader approach to teacher preparation, including requiring that teaching candidates pass a performance assessment in math and underwriting teacher residency programs, in which teachers work side by side with an effective teacher for a full year while taking courses in a graduate program.

    “You could end up becoming a pretty spectacular math teacher in a shorter amount of time than if you’re just studying things in an undergraduate program disconnected from student teaching,” she said.

    Weak state policies

    The report also grades every state’s policies on math instruction, from preparing teachers to coaching them after they’re in the classroom. California and two dozen states are rated “weak,” ahead of seven “unacceptable” states (Montana, Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, Alaska, Vermont and Maine) while behind 17 “moderate” states, including Texas and Florida, and a sole “strong” state, Alabama.

    The council bases the rating on the implementation of five policy “levers” to ensure “rigorous standards-aligned math instruction.” However, California’s actions are more nuanced than perhaps its “unacceptable” ratings on three and “strong” ratings on two would indicate.

    For example, the council dinged the state for not requiring that all teachers in a prep program pass a math licensure test. California does require elementary credential candidates to pass the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET, a basic skills test, before they can teach students. But the math portion is combined with science, and students can avoid the test by supplying proof they have taken undergraduate math courses.

    At the same time, many superintendents and math teachers may be doing a double-take for a “strong” rating for providing professional learning and ongoing support for teachers to sustain effective math instruction.

    Going back to the adoption of the Common Core, the state has not funded statewide teacher training in math standards. In the past five years, the state has spent $500 million to train literacy coaches in the state’s poorest schools, but nothing of that magnitude for math coaches.

    The Legislature approved $20 million for the California Mathematics Project for training in the new math framework, which was passed in 2023, and $50 million in 2022-23 for instruction in grades fourth to 12th in science, math and computer science training to train coaches and teacher leaders — amounts that would be impressive for smaller states, but not to fund training most math teachers in California. (You can find a listing of organizations offering training and resources on the math framework here.)

    In keeping with local control, Gov. Gavin Newsom has appropriated more than $10 billion in education block grants, including the Student Support and Professional Development Discretionary Block Grant, and the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, but those are discretionary; districts have wide latitude to spend money however they want on any subject.

    Tucked into a section on Literacy Instruction in Newsom’s May budget revision (see Page 19) is the mention that a $545 million grant for materials instruction will include a new opportunity to support math coaches, too. The release of the final state budget for 2025-26 later this month will reveal whether that money survives.

    Brown calls for hiring more math specialists for schools and for three-week summer intensive math leadership institutes like the one he attended in 1994. It hasn’t been held since the money ran dry in the early 2000s. 

    EdSource reporter Diana Lambert contributed to this article.





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  • What I learned from ChatGPT’s math mistakes

    What I learned from ChatGPT’s math mistakes


    Credit: Matheus Bertelli / Pexels

    I was traveling recently when my daughter called for help with her algebra homework. Faced with a challenging problem, I wanted to confirm my understanding before guiding hers. As someone studying artificial intelligence in education, I was curious: Could ChatGPT help?

    I typed in the problem: “Given the equation y=abx, if b is less than one, what happens to the graph as x gets larger?”

    ChatGPT shot back an answer” — “As x increases, the graph tends to approach 0” — though no explanation was included. (I realized I should have asked for one in my initial prompt). The AI’s use of the word “tends” left me feeling unsure of my own comprehension, and I like to deeply understand a math concept before explaining it to another person (in this case, my own kid). So I asked ChatGPT: Why?

    The AI spat out an explanation for its solution, but confused and dissatisfied with its answer, I continued to probe. “But … why … I don’t understand … why?” After a few more exchanges, my decision to keep pushing for clarification was justified when, to my surprise and satisfaction, ChatGPT stated: “I appreciate your patience. I misspoke again. I apologize for any confusion. I made an error in my previous message.”

    Though I was able to effectively conclude my cross-country tutoring session, my concerns lingered. What if I’d accepted the original answer as truth? What if I hadn’t pushed several times for the AI to justify its response? And what if I’d been … an eighth grader trying to use ChatGPT to help me complete my algebra homework?

    Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of our lives, and its presence in classrooms and schools is becoming ubiquitous. While AI has the potential to greatly assist students and educators, now, perhaps more than ever, we need to strengthen our uniquely human critical-thinking skills. My experience using ChatGPT sheds light on the importance of approaching AI tools with a discerning mindset and offers the following lessons:

    Challenging AI is a vital 21st century skill.

    My interaction with ChatGPT underscores the necessity for students to be equipped with the ability to challenge and question the information provided by AI. While these tools are powerful, they are not infallible. Students must be equipped with the ability to use these tools and, more importantly, with the skills to challenge and question the information they receive.

    Students need the confidence to ask probing questions.

    Persistence played a key role in my ability to uncover inaccuracies in the AI-generated information. Students need the confidence to ask probing questions and challenge AI responses to avoid accepting misleading conclusions. Educators should emphasize the importance of persistence when engaging with AI tools, encouraging students to pursue both accuracy and conceptual understanding.

    Beyond correct answers, embrace the learning process.

    While AI can provide correct answers, its limitations become apparent when delving into the intricacies of the learning process. The purpose of education isn’t only about obtaining correct solutions; it is about understanding the underlying concepts, asking meaningful questions and engaging in a dynamic dialogue with the material. AI tools should enhance this process, not overshadow it.

    Cultivating a mindset of curiosity and skepticism

    As we integrate AI into educational settings, educators must cultivate in their students a mindset of curiosity and healthy skepticism. Students should be encouraged to view AI as a resource but not an infallible authority, and they should learn to ask follow-up questions to reach their own conclusions. We should all embrace the 2-year-old inside of us and constantly ask: Why? Why is that? And why is that?

    Teach the tool, not just the subject

    The incorporation of AI into educational practices necessitates a shift in our pedagogical approaches. This involves imparting not just technical skills but also fostering a critical understanding of the tools students interact with. Educators should integrate lessons on effectively using and questioning AI into their curriculum. This will ensure students grasp the subject while developing a critical understanding of their learning tools.

    Conclusion

    My exploration of the exponential decay equation with ChatGPT symbolizes the broader challenges and opportunities presented by AI in education. While AI offers incredible potential, it demands a massive recalibration of our educational approaches. Let us embrace the responsibility to guide students in navigating this landscape with discernment, curiosity and the confidence to question. In doing so, we can equip them not just with correct answers but with the skills to navigate the dynamic intersections of technology and learning in the years to come.

    I ran this essay through ChatGPT and asked it to suggest a good call to action for my conclusion, and will let the AI have the last word:

    In the ever-evolving classroom of the future, the most powerful tool may not be the one with the most answers but the one that empowers us to ask the right questions.

    (Follow the entire interaction with ChatGPT in the screenshots below.)

    •••

    Jonathan Osler is a nonprofit consultant and was formerly a high school teacher, principal, and CalTeach faculty member.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Community college math policy: Balancing big picture gains and classroom struggles

    Community college math policy: Balancing big picture gains and classroom struggles


    Is this a picture of something bad, or something good?

    Cognitive scientists call this the global-local processing dilemma: Do we perceive the overall image, or focus on the details? Education policy often faces the same question: Can a policy be considered “good” if the overall data look promising, but the day-to-day experiences feel “bad?”

    This tension is at the heart of California’s college math reforms.

    Like the image, the story of these policies may look “good” from a distance, but “bad” up close.

    Before recent reforms, community college students who needed extra math support were typically placed in remedial courses like elementary algebra. These classes didn’t count toward transfer requirements, and most students stuck in them never made it to a math course needed to transfer to a four-year university, such as college algebra or introductory statistics. This created an academic dead end for many.

    A 2017 law, Assembly Bill 705, changed that. It used high school grades for placement and gave more students direct access to transfer-level courses, with corequisite support (a support course taken concurrently with a transfer-level course) when needed. Instead of multi-semester remediation, students could move into transfer-level math courses faster.

    While challenges remain, the approach led to significant improvements. In 2016-17, before AB 705 was announced, only 27% of students passed a transfer-level math course within one year. But in 2019-20, the first full year of AB 705’s implementation, that number had nearly doubled to 51%. And by 2023-24, it reached 62%. About 30,000 more students were fulfilling their math requirements each year. The story is similar in English courses, and so it’s undeniable that AB 705 has helped California’s community college students get one step closer to transfer. 

    Despite these gains, many faculty don’t see AB 705 as a success. As one instructor put it, “There are a lot more people failing than before … largely students of color. … By making this change (i.e., AB 705) around equity, we’ve created an inequitable system.” And the data do show that pass rates have declined. 

    But here’s the catch: Far more students are now taking those courses. The graph below helps illustrate this shift using data from one community college district. Before AB 705, only a small fraction of students reached transfer-level math, but with high pass rates, as shown by the darker blue shading within the dashed box. After AB 705, access expanded, but pass rates declined from 80% to 70%. Critically, that’s 70% of a much larger group.

    With such an improvement, why do some faculty feel like the policy is a failure? 

    Because of this paradox: AB 705 absolutely led to more students passing. But it also led to more students failing. 

    People respond more strongly to stories than to statistics, and losses loom larger than gains. The students we see struggling — their faces, their frustration, their stories — linger longer than a bar graph showing statewide gains. As faculty members, we know this all too well. We remember the students who didn’t make it. We think about what we could’ve done differently. We agonize over them.

    And often, faculty haven’t been given the full picture. Our research has found that many instructors hadn’t even seen outcome data on AB 705’s impact. So, without that context, and given the classroom experience, it’s reasonable to assume the policy failed.

    This disconnect is a classic challenge in public policy: a policy can be effective overall but still feel painful on the ground. And this tension is always a part of the hard work of building systemic justice. AB 705 succeeded in dismantling long-standing barriers and expanding access to transfer-level math. But that progress has introduced new classroom dynamics that feel personal, urgent and overwhelming to faculty. Good policy must account for both the big-picture gains and the human cost of change. Reforms don’t succeed on data alone. They require understanding, empathy and support for those doing the work.

    And just as faculty were beginning to adjust to AB 705, we face Assembly Bill 1705, a sharper and even more controversial new policy. It asks colleges to stretch even more, limiting their ability to offer even prerequisite math courses. Understandably, many educators are still reeling. They’re trying to adapt to new expectations while managing unintended consequences in their classrooms. Recent guidance has softened the rollout, but confusion remains. The stakes are high, and many faculty feel mistrustful and angry.

    If AB 705 taught us anything, it’s that mistrust grows when there’s a gap between what the data show and what people experience. This is why the next phase of work cannot be just about compliance or policy enforcement. It must be about storytelling, listening and solutions. Faculty need to see the big picture. Policymakers need to understand life on the ground. The policy “worked” in aggregate, but not without professional and emotional cost. If we ignore that, we risk undermining the very equity goals these reforms were meant to achieve.

    Like the image above, the truth lies in seeing both levels clearly. We must acknowledge the trade-offs, the tension, and the very real pain of transition. Let’s take concerns seriously without retreating from hard-won progress. Let’s keep asking the harder, more honest questions: How do we support both students and faculty through ambitious change? How do we ensure that every student, not just the most prepared, has a real shot at success? 

    If we can do that, maybe we’ll find a way forward that is both honest and hopeful, one that sees the whole picture.

    •••

    Ji Y. Son, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist and professor at California State University, Los Angeles and co-founder of CourseKata.org, a statistics and data science curriculum used by colleges and high schools.
    Federick Ngo, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research examines higher education policy, with a focus on college access and community college students.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • UC professors’ math problem: How does data science fit in?

    UC professors’ math problem: How does data science fit in?


    In data science classes, students write computer programs to help analyze large sets of data.

    Credit: Alison Yin/EdSource

    The article was updated March 5 to include the letter from high-tech executives supporting the Algebra II requirement. It also clarifies that AP Statistics is for students who have completed Algebra II.

    An influential committee of the UC Academic Senate weighed in again last month on the contentious issue of how much math high school students must take to qualify to attend a four-year California state university. 

    It ruled that high school students taking an introductory data science course or AP Statistics cannot substitute it for Algebra II for admission to the University of California and California State University, starting in the fall of 2025.

    The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools or BOARS reaffirmed its position by accepting the recommendations of a workgroup of math and statistics professors who examined the issue. That workgroup determined that none of these courses labeled as data science “even come close” to qualifying as a more advanced algebra course. 

    Robert Gould, a teaching professor and vice chair of undergraduate studies in the statistics department at UCLA and lead author of Introduction to Data Science, said that he disagrees with BOARS’ decision. The course was created under the auspices of the National Science Foundation through a math and science partnership grant.

    “We are disappointed, of course,” he said. “We believe our course is rigorous and challenging and, most importantly, contains knowledge and skills that all students need for both career and academic success.”

    But how, then, will UC and CSU ultimately fit popular data science courses like CourseKata, Introduction to Data Science, and YouCubed’s Explorations in Data Science into course requirements for admission? That bigger question won’t be determined until May when the math workgroup will issue its next report.

    Data science advocates are worried that BOARS, which commissioned the review, may disqualify data science and possibly statistics under the category of math courses meeting the criteria for admissions. Increasing numbers of high school students are turning to introductory data courses in a world shaped by artificial intelligence and other data-driven opportunities and careers. They see them as approachable alternatives to trigonometry, pre-calculus and other rigorous courses students must take to major in science, technology engineering or math (STEM) in college.

    Dozens of high school math teachers and administrators have signed a letter being circulated that will go to the UC regents. It reiterates support for data science and statistics courses and criticizes BOARS for not consulting high school teachers and data science experts for their perspectives.

    “Our schools and districts have adopted such courses because they provide an innovative 21st-century experience that excites and engages students, impart tangible quantitative skills needed for a wide variety of today’s careers and academic fields, and offer new ways for students to interact with and learn mathematics,” the letter states.

    Pamela Burdman, executive director of the nonprofit Just Equations, agreed in a blog post titled “The Latest in the Inexplicable War on High School Data Science Courses.” “The bottom line is that districts are increasingly offering these courses because they are relevant and engaging for many students who otherwise would be turned off by mathematics,” she wrote.

    Will it help or hinder equity?

    Critics of substituting introductory data sciences courses for advanced algebra include STEM professors at UC and CSU. Many say they support data science, but not courses lacking the full range of math topics in high schools that students need for STEM or any major requiring quantitative skills. Skipping foundational math in high school will set back the cause of equity for underserved students of color, not advance it, they argue, by creating the illusion that students are ready for statistics, computer science and data science majors when they aren’t. That may force them to take catch-up courses in community college.

    “The only way we’re going to diversify STEM fields is to keep historically excluded young students on the algebraic thinking pathway just a little bit longer,” Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at Lowell High in San Francisco and former software executive, wrote to EdSource last year. “That will give them the mathematical competencies they will need to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to pursue rigorous quantitative majors and careers.”

    Proponents of holding the line on Algebra II and encouraging more students to pursue STEM majors are circulating their own attention-grabbing letter titled Strong Math Foundations are Important for AI. The signers, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, his nemesis Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpaceX and CEO of X, and executives from Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Google, “applaud” UC for maintaining the math requirements.

    “While today’s advances might suggest classic mathematical topics like calculus or algebra are outdated, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, modern AI systems are rooted in mathematics, making a strong command over math necessary for careers in this field,” it reads. “Failure to maintain standards in the mathematical curriculum in public education will increase the gap between public schools — especially those of under-resourced districts — and private schools, hampering efforts to diversify STEM.”

    Surprise actions by UC Office of President

    For decades, UC and CSU have required that students complete three years of math with at least a “C” — usually in the sequence Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II, also called Advanced Algebra – as the math component of A-G, the 15 courses needed for admission. For students taking integrated math, it is Math I, II and III. Both university systems recommend a fourth year of math, and most students take at least that; aspiring STEM majors take two or more additional courses leading to Calculus.

    BOARS establishes policies on admissions, but a small office in the UC President’s Office, the High School Articulation Unit, vets tens of thousands of courses that developers and high school teachers submit for approval. Starting in 2014, the unit began authorizing AP statistics and new data science courses as “validating” or satisfying Algebra II or Integrated Math III content requirements. That meant they either built on the content standards that students had covered or would cover in the course. 

    Although AP Statistics doesn’t cover most Algebra II topics, the rationale for validating it and data science courses — mistakenly so, BOARS determined in retrospect — was that Algebra II includes some statistics, and most teachers never get around to teaching it. That was problematic for introductory data science courses, because the state hasn’t set standards for what should be covered in the courses.  The College Board, the creator of AP Statistics, states that the course is designed for students who have completed Algebra II.

    During the last few years, the staff in the review office approved the three most popular data science courses in more than 400 high schools. After analyzing the three courses, the UC workgroup professors concluded, “We find these current courses labeled as ‘data science’ are more akin to data literacy courses.”

    UC academic committee meetings, including BOARS, are closed to the public. But minutes from the July 2023 meeting indicated that some faculty members were dismayed that the articulation office had validated so many data science courses without their knowledge. “At least one member repeatedly suggested that UCOP has misinterpreted/misapplied the advanced math standard for years — and absent correction, will continue to do so — and so review of all current courses potentially implicated is needed,” the minutes state.

    BOARS hasn’t ruled out approving future data science courses that include more advanced algebra as a substitute for Algebra II; the articulation office has validated Financial Algebra for that purpose. BOARS invited course alternatives in a June 2020 statement, saying it saw the expanded options “as both a college preparation and equity issue.”

    But data science proponents are concerned that the math workgroup will take the opposite position and recommend that the three introductory data science courses be treated as elective courses for A-G but not fourth-year math courses. Ruling that way, they argue, would discourage future non-STEM majors from taking an alternative quantitative reasoning course as seniors. Such a position would reinforce a narrow view that only courses leading to Calculus are legitimate math offerings in the senior year.

    “Revocation of Area C (math) status will significantly reduce our ability to foster students’ statistical and data competency or incentivize enrollment in these programs, at a time when such quantitative abilities are increasingly necessary for functioning personally and professionally in the 21st Century,” the letter to the UC regents says.

    Lai Bui, a veteran math teacher at Mills High School in the San Mateo Union High School District, said there’s no justification for treating CourseKata, an introduction to data science course, differently from AP Statistics, which BOARS has qualified as a fourth-year math course. Students in CourseKata use coding to analyze datasets, while AP Stats students use graphing calculators, which have limitations, she said.

    UCLA and CSU Los Angeles created CourseKata in 2017 as a semester course for college and as a two-semester course for high schools; otherwise, they are similar, said Bui, who has taught it for four years.

    “CourseKata is definitely not data literacy,” she said. “It’s a math course, like AP Statistics, only more real-world connected. I see students succeeding in math instead of thinking, ‘I am not a math person.’”

    In 2023, the CSU Academic Senate expressed frustration that UC was approving courses in data science in lieu of Algebra II without consulting it and urged more joint decision-making involving A-G decisions. In January, three CSU professors were added to the 10-member UC math workgroup.

    Mark Van Selst, a psychology professor at San Jose State and member of the Academic Preparation and Education Programs Committee, considered CSU’s counterpart of BOARS, said this week he fully supports the decision not to retreat from Algebra II as a base of knowledge. But he also favors qualifying non-traditional fourth-year math courses that strengthen quantitative reasoning. He said he hopes the UC math workgroup drafts standards or learning outcomes for data science to distinguish between electives and advanced math courses.

    Gould said he would need to review the possible criteria before deciding whether to revise the content of Introduction to Data Science.

    “A data science education is essential for all students, and all students deserve a relevant and useful math education,” he said. “Despite the committee’s decision, we think it’s important that data science and statistics courses continue to qualify as fourth-year math courses.”





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  • Advanced math in high school prepares students for STEM and data science careers

    Advanced math in high school prepares students for STEM and data science careers


    A high school student contemplates an assignment in math class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    California, along with many other states and nations, has experienced a dramatic increase of student interest in data and computer science careers. Along with the broader tech industry, these fields have been undergoing exponential growth in recent years that’s expected to continue as artificial intelligence (AI), computing platforms and their applications continue to reach every aspect of society.

    The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 36% employment growth for data scientists by 2031. California businesses and other sectors are the top home for many of these high-paying careers.

    It’s the responsibility of our state’s academic systems to educate future data-driven leaders in many areas — tech, finance, business, entertainment, biomedicine and health, climate and sustainability, engineering, law, social welfare, public policy, government and education itself, as well as in innovative approaches to the arts and humanities.

    A report recently issued by a work group for the University of California’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) concluded that the three most popular high school data science courses being offered in the state do not “even come close to meeting the required standard to be a ‘more advanced’ course” and “are not appropriate as recommended 4th year mathematics courses.”

    We applaud the faculty and staff, across the UC system, who helped develop this report and its recommendations. And we’re delighted by the quick response from the UC Office of the President this month, which shared the message with high school counselors and advisers, summarizing the report and explaining additional steps that UC is taking to implement the BOARS recommendations for the 2025-26 academic year.

    This is a noteworthy example of the California educational system working well and listening to expert feedback in order to best serve its students. Hundreds of university professors in the state and beyond came out against the rapid adoption of high school data science classes that were being offered as a supposed substitute for advanced algebraic math, or Algebra II. While these introductory data science courses may whet high school students’ appetites, if they are taken at the exclusion of Algebra II, students will not be adequately prepared for science and technology majors in college. We must make sure that the prerequisites for admission to our colleges and universities adequately prepare students to pursue careers in these fields.

    Other Perspectives on this topic

    This could leave the impression that we don’t support data science — which is far from the truth! We believe that data science is an important discipline to study and a career path for making important contributions in our communities and world. Data science can be a route to increased data literacy, enabling students to distinguish between real information and misinformation and the skills to pursue data-driven approaches to whatever their passions and wherever their careers may lead.

    Our data science program at UC Berkeley’s College for Computing, Data Science, and Society is the top-ranked program for undergraduate students in the country. We’ve been active in providing curriculum materials to other institutions in California and around the world, including community colleges and universities. We’ve hosted educators across a broad range of academic institutions, including high schools, at an annual conference on data science education for the last six years.

    We know from years of study and practice that learning math is cumulative. In order for California students to be adequately prepared for the science and technology majors they may choose to pursue in college — including data and computer science — the advanced math curriculum in high school is essential. While data science and statistics courses have been rapidly added to high school options and are welcome additions, these courses cannot replace the foundational math content found in Algebra II. We also acknowledge, and encourage, innovative curricula aiming to teach Algebra II via the context of data science, as such courses could be appropriate.

    We applaud UC and California decision-makers for their recognition that Algebra II is necessary student preparation for the successful completion of college degrees that require a strong grounding in math, including data and computer science. We welcome opportunities to continue this conversation and promote successful outcomes by ensuring students obtain the math knowledge and skills to pursue careers in science and technology.

    •••

    Jennifer Chayes is dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, information, mathematics and statistics.

    Jelani Nelson is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Data Science helps students of color opt in for more math 

    Data Science helps students of color opt in for more math 


    Credit: Pexels

     It was the height of distance learning when 16-year-old Aaron Butler took Compton Unified’s first step into data science education by joining the Young Data Scientists League. The next year, 2021, the young African American varsity basketball captain enrolled in Compton’s first high school data science course, thanks to a 2020 decision by UC’s admissions committee allowing such courses to qualify for students’ third or fourth year of high school math. Now a business economics major at UCLA, Aaron said that “before I was closed off to math, but data science made me way more interested in mathematics.”

    Because of UC’s decision to count data science toward the math requirement for college admissions, Compton’s Dominguez High counselors recommended that students like Aaron enroll in data science without fear of them losing their competitive edge on university admissions. Ensuring college access is paramount for our student population, who are predominantly Hispanic, Black and Pacific-Islander and 94% of whom are socio-economically disadvantaged. Data science, with its hands-on, real-world applications, is exactly the right gateway for both math-averse and math-inclined students alike to engage with rich mathematics and take the UC-recommended four years of math coursework.

    Now UC has retracted that decision, making it much less likely that counselors will recommend data science to our students. Consequently, we’re likely to see a decline in enrollment and retention during the four years of high school mathematics among students of color.

    Data Science at Dominguez High School is the only course in Compton Unified that allows students to receive regular in-classroom instruction in relevant topics such as predictive mathematical modeling, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), sensitivity analysis, and programming, which all rely on math concepts taught and reinforced in the data science classroom. This is in addition to a number of other high-level concepts in quantitative reasoning and analysis, such as linear algebra, 3D vector space, conditional probability and more.  

    As the teacher of Compton’s Data Science course, in partnership with Stanford’s Youcubed, I (Jason) end up teaching content from a range of advanced math standards because, though my students are passing courses like Integrated Math 3, Precalculus and even Calculus, they are not fully grasping the material there. Students report having the opportunity to finally make sense of their traditional math courses by applying concepts as a part of the data science experience. Once they learn to think about math in context, they possess a skill that enables them to learn subsequent math content better.

    Another PERSPECTIVE ON THIS TOPIC

    This is a defining moment for mathematics education in California. Neural network models, the driving force behind AI tools such as ChatGPT, are one of the hottest subjects in applied mathematics research. By adopting data science in 2020, UC took a proactive step toward reframing mathematics as a relevant discipline that could equip 21st century learners with scientifically valid tools to engage in the rapidly changing information landscape. At the same time, UC recognized alternate pathways to quantitative reasoning courses in college without precluding students from science, tech, engineering and math (STEM) majors. The reversal of that decision will push math back to a position of irrelevance in the eyes of most students, especially those traditionally marginalized in STEM. 

    Moreover, not allowing data science courses to count for admission doesn’t only sacrifice a hook for attracting students to STEM fields. It also denies students who are not interested in STEM the opportunity to code, exacerbating the digital divide and, consequently, the wealth gap. As UC’s Office of the President wrote after the Berkeley campus created a college of computing, data science and society, “Every undergraduate in any area of study will increasingly need exposure to data science during their time on campus.”

    Why should students wait until college to delve into these rich waters of mathematical study?

    Narrowing the scope of acceptable mathematics perpetuates exclusivity rather than fostering inclusivity and belief in all learners’ potential. For many Dominguez High students we’ve spoken with who are either enrolled or have graduated from the UC system, success and persistence in STEM, including data science, correlated to growth mindsets, cultural competence, positive identities and supportive communities and structures. 

    As technology evolves, so must we reevaluate definitions, policies and support systems that address gaps in math achievement, engagement and retention. This comprehensive reassessment requires input from diverse stakeholders, fostering collective understanding and alignment toward common goals. We must put in place a review process that engages school districts, education leaders, classroom educators, faculty from the California State University, and families who can offer crucial insights on the impact of key decisions affecting our most vulnerable populations. This process must be data-driven. It is argued that allowing data science to validate Algebra 2 adversely impacted preparation for STEM degrees for students of color. Where is the data supporting this assertion? On the contrary, we have decades of data that demonstrate that the traditional Algebra 2 pathway disproportionately fails to get students of color college-ready, and falls short of promises to boost post-secondary STEM engagement.

    We have seen the power of data science to increase college readiness and STEM engagement for all, particularly underrepresented students of color. As Aaron told us, “Data science was very hands-on because we were applying the math we learned. It made me like the course even more.” Every student like Aaron should have exposure to data science that opens mathematics to them as a highly relevant 21st century discipline where they know they belong.

    •••

    Jason Lee Morgan, an 18-year math teacher at Dominguez High School in Compton, instructs the Stanford YouCubed’s data science course. 

    Kagba Suaray, Ph.D., is a professor of mathematics and statistics at California State University, Long Beach, and graduate adviser for the applied statistics master of science program. 

    Kyndall Brown, Ph.D., executive director of the California Math Project at UCLA and Robin Wilson, Ph.D., professor of mathematics at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and Loyola Marymount University, contributed to this commentary.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California poorly trains and supports its math teachers, report concludes 

    California poorly trains and supports its math teachers, report concludes 


    Teacher apprentice Ja’net Williams helps with a math lesson in a first grade class at Delta Elementary Charter School in Clarksburg, near Sacramento.

    Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • California leaders dismiss the criticism and methodology of the rankings.
    • And yet, graduate credentialing programs cram a lot in a year. 
    • Many teachers may struggle with the demands of California’s new math framework.

    In its “State of the States” report on math instruction published last week, the National Council on Teacher Quality sharply criticized California and many of its teacher certification programs for ineffectively preparing new elementary teachers to teach math and for failing to support and guide them once they reach the classroom.  

    “Far too many elementary teacher prep programs fail to dedicate enough instructional time to building aspiring teachers’ math knowledge — leaving teachers unprepared and students underserved,” the council said in its evaluation of California’s 87 programs that prepare elementary school teachers. “The analysis shows California programs perform among the lowest in the country.”

    The report’s call for more teacher math training and ongoing support coincides with the state’s adoption this summer of materials and textbooks for a new math framework that math professionals universally agree will be a heavy lift for incoming and veteran teachers to master. It will challenge elementary teachers with a poor grasp of the underpinnings behind the math they’ll be teaching. 

    Kyndall Brown, executive director of the California Mathematics Project based at UCLA, agrees. “It’s not just about knowing the content, it’s about helping students learn the content, which are two completely different things,” he said.

    And that raises a question: Does a one-year-plus-summer graduate program, which most prospective teachers take, cram too much in a short time to realistically meet the needs to teach elementary school math?

    California joined two dozen states whose math preparation programs were rated as “weak.” Only one state got a “strong” rating.
    Source: National Council on Teacher Quality, 2025 State of the States report

    Failing grades

    The council graded every teacher prep program nationwide from A to F, based on how many instructional hours they required prospective teachers to take in major content areas of math and in instructional methods and strategies.

    Three out of four California programs got an F, with some programs — California State University, Sacramento, and California State University, Monterey Bay — requiring no instructional hours for algebraic thinking, geometry, and probability, and many offering one-quarter of the 135 instructional hours needed for an A.

    But there was a dichotomy: All the Fs were given to one-year graduate school programs offering a multi-subject credential to teach elementary school, historically the way most new teachers in California get their teaching credential.

    On the other hand, many of the colleges and universities offering a teaching credential and a bachelor’s degree through an Integrated Undergraduate Teacher Credentialing Program got an A, because they included enough time to go into math instruction and content in more depth. For example, California State University, Long Beach’s 226 instructional hours, apportioned through all of the content areas and methods courses, earned an A-plus.

     The California State University rejects the recent grading from the National Council on Teacher Quality about our high-quality teacher training programs

    California State University

    Most of the universities that offer both undergraduate and graduate programs — California State University, Bakersfield; San Jose State University; California State University, Chico; California State University, Northridge, to name a few — had the same split: A for their undergraduate programs, F for their graduate credentialing programs.

    Most California teacher preparation programs have received bad grades in the dozen years that the council has issued evaluations. The state’s higher education institutions, in turn, have defended their programs and denounced the council for basing the quality of a program on analyses of program websites and syllabi.

    California State University, whose campuses train the majority of teachers, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which accredits and oversees teacher prep programs, issued similar denunciations last week.

     “The California State University rejects the recent grading from the National Council on Teacher Quality about our high-quality teacher training programs,” the CSU wrote in a statement. The council “relies on a narrow and flawed methodology, heavily dependent on document reviews, rather than on dialogue with program faculty, students and employers or a systematic review of meaningful program outcomes.”  

    The credentialing commission, in a more diplomatic response, agreed. The report “reflects a methodology that differs from California’s approach to educator preparation,” it said. “While informative, it does not fully capture the structure of California’s clinically rich, performance-based system.” 

    Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality for the past three years, dismissed the criticism as “a really weak critique.”

    “You can look at a syllabus and see what’s being taught in that class much in the same way that if you go to a restaurant and look at the menu to see what’s being served,” she said. “Our reviews are certainly a very solid starting place to know to what extent teacher preparation programs are well preparing future teachers to be effective in teaching.”

    It’s not just a problem in California.

    “When we compare the mathematics instructional hours between the undergrad and the graduate programs, often on the same campus, we saw on average that undergrads get 133 hours compared to just 52 hours at the graduate level. In both cases, it is not meeting the recommended and research-based 150 hours,” Peske said. 

    Part of the problem is that graduate programs usually don’t have enough time to instill future teachers with the content knowledge that they need.

    Heather Peske

    Whether or not examining website data is a good methodology, the disparities in hours devoted to math preparation between undergraduate and graduate programs raise an important issue. 

    True jacks of all trades, elementary teachers must become proficient in many content areas — social studies, English language arts, English language development for English learners, and science, as well as math. Add to that proficiency in emerging technologies, classroom management, skills for teaching students with disabilities, and student mental health: How can they adequately cover math, especially?

    “Part of the problem is that graduate programs usually don’t have enough time to instill future teachers with the content knowledge that they need,” Peske said. “California programs have to reckon with this idea that they’re sending a bunch of teachers into classrooms who have not demonstrated that they are ready to teach kids math.”

    Brown said, “There’s no way that in a one-year credential program that they’re going to get the math that they need to be able to teach the content that they’re responsible for teaching.”

    That was Anthony Caston’s experience. Before starting his career as a sixth-grade teacher at Foulks Ranch Elementary School in Elk Grove three years ago, Caston took courses for his credential in graduate programs at Sacramento State and the University of the Pacific. There wasn’t enough time to learn all he needed to teach the subject, he said. A few classes were useful, but didn’t get much beyond the third- or fourth-grade curriculum, he said.

    “I had to take myself back to school, reteach myself everything, and then come up with some teaching strategies,” Caston said. 

    Fortunately for him, veteran teachers at his school helped him learn more about Common Core math and how to teach it.

    The math content Brown refers to goes beyond knowing how to invert fractions or calculate the area of a triangle; it involves a conceptual understanding of essential math topics, Peske said. Only a deeper conceptual grasp will enable teachers to diagnose and explain students’ errors and misunderstandings, Peske said, and to overcome the math phobia that surveys show many teachers have.

    Ma Bernadette Salgarino, the president of the California Mathematics Council and a math trainer in the Santa Clara County Office of Education, acknowledges that many math teachers have not been taught the concepts behind the progression of the state’s math standards. “It is not clear to them,” she said. “They’re still teaching to a regurgitation of procedures, copy and paste. These are the steps, and this is what you will do.”

    Although a longtime critic of the council, Linda Darling-Hammond, who chaired California’s credentialing commission before becoming the current president of the State Board of Education, acknowledges that the report raises a legitimate issue.

    “Time is an important question,” she said. “It is true that having more time well spent — the ‘well spent’ matters — could make a difference for lots of people in learning lots of subjects, including math.”

    Darling-Hammond faults the study, however, for not factoring in California’s broader approach to teacher preparation, including requiring that teaching candidates pass a performance assessment in math and underwriting teacher residency programs, in which teachers work side by side with an effective teacher for a full year while taking courses in a graduate program.

    “You could end up becoming a pretty spectacular math teacher in a shorter amount of time than if you’re just studying things in an undergraduate program disconnected from student teaching,” she said.

    Weak state policies

    The report also grades every state’s policies on math instruction, from preparing teachers to coaching them after they’re in the classroom. California and two dozen states are rated “weak,” ahead of seven “unacceptable” states (Montana, Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, Alaska, Vermont and Maine) while behind 17 “moderate” states, including Texas and Florida, and a sole “strong” state, Alabama.

    The council bases the rating on the implementation of five policy “levers” to ensure “rigorous standards-aligned math instruction.” However, California’s actions are more nuanced than perhaps its “unacceptable” ratings on three and “strong” ratings on two would indicate.

    For example, the council dinged the state for not requiring that all teachers in a prep program pass a math licensure test. California does require elementary credential candidates to pass the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET, a basic skills test, before they can teach students. But the math portion is combined with science, and students can avoid the test by supplying proof they have taken undergraduate math courses.

    At the same time, many superintendents and math teachers may be doing a double-take for a “strong” rating for providing professional learning and ongoing support for teachers to sustain effective math instruction.

    Going back to the adoption of the Common Core, the state has not funded statewide teacher training in math standards. In the past five years, the state has spent $500 million to train literacy coaches in the state’s poorest schools, but nothing of that magnitude for math coaches.

    The Legislature approved $20 million for the California Mathematics Project for training in the new math framework, which was passed in 2023, and $50 million in 2022-23 for instruction in grades fourth to 12th in science, math and computer science training to train coaches and teacher leaders — amounts that would be impressive for smaller states, but not to fund training most math teachers in California. (You can find a listing of organizations offering training and resources on the math framework here.)

    In keeping with local control, Gov. Gavin Newsom has appropriated more than $10 billion in education block grants, including the Student Support and Professional Development Discretionary Block Grant, and the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, but those are discretionary; districts have wide latitude to spend money however they want on any subject.

    Tucked into a section on Literacy Instruction in Newsom’s May budget revision (see Page 19) is the mention that a $545 million grant for materials instruction will include a new opportunity to support math coaches, too. The release of the final state budget for 2025-26 later this month will reveal whether that money survives.

    Brown calls for hiring more math specialists for schools and for three-week summer intensive math leadership institutes like the one he attended in 1994. It hasn’t been held since the money ran dry in the early 2000s. 

    EdSource reporter Diana Lambert contributed to this article.





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