Beyond dumb, actually.

If a kid in middle school is ready for Algebra I, then that kid should be able to take it. Other kids are not yet ready, and that's also fine. They should be taking the math they're ready for.

Here is a math thing, only tangentially connected to the OP. When I was 47 years old, I was taking calculus at my local junior college. Back when I was in high school, more than 30 years earlier, I was in a very good math program (UICSM, which stood for the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics, and if you ever took that program, PM me). It was wonderful. We were led to discover EVERYTHING. As a consequence, I went thirty years without taking another math class and tested directly into Algebra II. I loved math when I got back to it. Back in high school, when we got to the calculus part of the program, I started floundering. Failing actually. I barely passed my last semester of math with a D. I didn't understand anything, I couldn't keep up. So now, thirty years later, I'm in calculus and absolutely loving it. I kept on stopping the math teachers at the junior college to tell them how much I was loving calculus. To a person they said, "Oh, Sheila. What most people don't understand is that math is developmental. Most 16 or 17 year olds are simply not ready for calculus, no matter how smart they are. At 19 they will be." Here I was, in my late 40's, more than ready for calculus.

I often tell this story to kids in high school. I want them to know that no matter how well they did in Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and pre-calculus, they may simply be a bit too young for the real thing. Give it a year or two, and they'll do just fine.

I saw that with my younger son. He was always in the advanced math group at his school, but he was always at the outside edge of what he could do. He struggled with calculus. In college, when he needed to take it again, he did very well.

Which is NOT to say middle school kids shouldn't be taking algebra I. If they're ready for it, they should be taking it. Period. End of discussion.

That attitude will hold some kids back.

Our k-8 school shifted away from automatically offering geometry in 7th or 8th grade. They spend two years in algebra now (second year is "advanced" algebra, but it isn't Algebra 2.) Geometry is offered every other year at the k-8 school. My kids were long done with that by the time the school made the switch.

The school seemed to embrace my oldest (and his classmate) taking algebra in 5th grade. But my youngest kid's class? Well, let's just say battles were waged. I think there were too many kids looking to take Algebra 2 in 8th grade, which would've been a logistical nightmare for both the k-8 school and the high school. Instead of sending a whole bunch of kids up to the high school, my youngest and a classmate were the only ones offered the opportunity. The math teacher felt that the other kids weren't ready, and he was likely right. The kids were moving too far too fast and some of them were floundering. So they slowed things down a lot. The math really does build on itself each year and the kids were looking to fall down at some point. But there were a lot of parents pushing to get their kids into Algebra 2 for 8th grade, and the school said no. I think the math teacher lasted one more year before moving on.

I don't see the logic of holding algebra until high school. It isn't terribly unusual to start with that class as a freshman in high school, but I sure hope that kids that need to move faster will be able to. My HS senior has taken as much math as I took to get my engineering degree and he still has one more year left. My youngest, a junior, will take either diff eq, calc 4 or linear alg this fall. He'll take one less math class in high school than his brother. But holding them back in math would've been disastrous for them. They aren't exactly unusual - each class in each school has a kid or three like that.

I share the outrage!
the typical sequence for advancing in secondary school math is

*Algebra 1
*Geometry
* Algebra 2
* Precalculus
* Calculus
and some nice electives like Probability and Statistics. Not to mention taking AP classes in Calculus. That is 5 years worth of math in 5 years. These classes are prerequisites. And I guess the school district is not offering summer enrichment either to take these other math classes.

For a metropolitan community like SFO with proximity to Silicon Valley, eliminating Alg 1 in middle school will effectively hold kids back from preparing for the colleges in the area like Stanford, Berkeley. For kids to compete, especially in STEM college majors, they need all the math classes they can get for free before entering college.

The parents and teachers should fight this tooth and nail, all the way to infinity.

At least in MS way back in the Pleistocene, you had to do Algebra I in 8th grade to get to Calculus by 12th. IIRC it was
8th: Algebra I
9th: Geometry
10th: Analytic Geometry and Algebra II
11th: Trig and Pre-calc
12th: Calculus

Now, as a side point, that's probably backwards: Calculus should be taught before trig. But you do really need the rest of those before Calculus...

And given my experience, I doubt the SFUSD will give them a straight answer.

Too much of the most basic calculus involves derivatives of trigonometric functions...Or integration by trig substitution - also very basic in calculus. A lot of the related rates problems one sees in the first few weeks of calculus uses trig functions. Trig really has to come first to do anything hing remotely useful in elementary calculus.

Kids should learn sine and cosine as the basis solutions to y'' + y = 0, rather than as the ratios between sides of a right triangle.

No reason to abstract the notions to solutions of linear ODEs when the clear intuition comes from the usual ratios....and the usual ratios give us the law of cosines and other useful things for which the ODE definition is overkill.

Why not define cosine, sine, and exp in terms of Taylor series? That is perfectly equivalent as well, but requires a lot more foundation to finally achieve the definition -assuming you even properly define what a limit of an infinite series is...and all of this would come with no intuition.

Its a dry humor, but its there.

If I'm wrong then I dunno what to say... Derivative of sine is cosine, lets just memorize it without knowing what sine or cosine mean!

I took it in the 8th grade I think, and I hated math from that moment onward.

I still remember that hateful teacher.

Take https://www.nwea.org/blog/2013/early-algebra-and-the-common-core-state-standards/ .

It suggests that the Common Core puts Alg. I in high school. It does, but we'll get back to that. But the achievement for early Alg. I isn't higher than for 9th-grade Alg. I, so the move to push it into middle school has proven a waste.

It then points out the real problem: If you want to be egalitarian and let everybody who wants to take Alg. I you will have to dumb down the class. The alternatives are to fail a bunch of students, work the teachers to death with lot sof extra tutoring sessions, or not be egalitarian. For the last option you have some sort of placement test or use teacher recommendations/test scores to screen students.

Option 1 is bad. Option 2 is bad. Option 3 is politically undesirable, therefore evil. It also allows groups that are less ready to claim they're being screened out, whether they're disadvantaged or over-advantaged. That means you have to have open enrollment.

Common Core itself has a structured "model" pathway of 3 courses for all students: Alg. I, geometry, Alg. II. It has 4 explicit ways of implementing these. One of them is "compacting" the middle school math into 6th and 7th grades, freeing up 8th grade for Alg. I. It's not preferred; it's not dispreferred. It's just not what they think will be the standard. That's fine. G/T and the top 20% in general should be dealt with specially if they're game.

However, let's get back to the 3 alternatives for implementing Alg. I in middle school--open enrollment leading to either watered down standards, high fail rates, or massive amounts of tutoring. Compacting the curriculum brings in a 4th problem: Under Common Core the kids taking Alg. I in 8th grade have to have all the 8th grade math curriculum squashed into 6th and 7th. If you're not taking 8th grade Alg., then you spread it out.

What happens if in 7th grade--because your parents have woken up or because you've transferred to the district--you decide you want to take 8th grade algebra? Well, tough noogies: You're not in compacted 6th and 7th grade math. What if you finish 7th grade compacted math and don't want to take algebra in 8th grade? Tough: You've had the 8th grade math curriculum, you shouldn't just sit and have a year off from math.

This means that once you've signed on, you're stuck unless you fail out. Now, students will do that quite on purpose. And the school's AYP rating's flushed. So you have to be selective about who you allow into the compacted course sequence and they have to be aware that once they're into the second year of it they're committed to "serve their time" for year 3 come hell or high water, and the school has to be ready to just give Fs to those who refuse to serve their time.

I find SF's actions loathsome. But we've hogtied them--parents insist on open enrollment, equal treatment, freedom of choice, and their making AYP with fail rates being part of AYP. There's no point complaining that the schools are going through that door when it's the only one available and we're horsewhipping them to make them go forward. The population's made choices--now they're stuck with the consequences of their choices. It really doesn't matter if they're choices they predicted or wanted. They want a different outcome, they get to rethink their choices, but for that to happen first they'd have to admit that they're responsible for the current state of affairs. And that isn't going to happen, Americans are far, far into a culture of blame.

One, you can take calc your senior year if the schools are on block scheduling (and many high schools have switched to that). All one would have to do is take alg 2 and trig/pre calc in their junior year back to back. Also I took calc in high school under year long classes by taking a class that combined alg 2 and pre calc in one class. So it can be done.

Two, the problem of kids who are manifestly incapable of taking the class but take it anyway will come up but even worse is those who can pass the alg 1 in 8th but then can't keep the accelerated pace they wind up having to take in high school due to having done that. I think any d students in this class should retake alg 1 in 9th.

that said, I think in a system that is as large as San Francisco is, they should be able to find enough students who are interested and capable of taking alg 1 in 8th to have classes of alg 1 in 8th.