How Much Individualized Math Acceleration Is Too Much?

How much math acceleration should schools provide?

There's been a lot of discussion over on Twitter in the last day or two about how much acceleration students can receive in math, especially in elementary school, and a lot of concern that perhaps students' time is being wasted, they're being prevented from learning at their own pace, and a lot of advocacy for the idea that every student should be taught at their individual pace.

And this idea comes, it seems, mostly from Silicon Valley tech bro types, maybe people who, as kids, were bored in school, wanted to work faster, didn't particularly enjoy working with other people, and they see the options that kids have now to learn independently on computers and things like that and think, that would've been great for me.

I don't know that they're really thinking about their own kids and whether they would actually enjoy that.

I think it's kind of a vicarious thing like, oh, I wish I had had this opportunity.

But they really clearly have not thought through the details of what it would look like to offer truly individualized math instruction on a per-kid basis.

Because what you lose when you individualize is you lose the class.

You don't have a class of other kids that you're learning with.

And of course, we don't have the staff to have one-to-one, you know, kind of tutoring for advanced kids in school.

So this kid's just going to be on a computer.

They're going to be on an iPad or like some sort of device that isolates them from human contact for more of the day.

And that doesn't sound great to me.

I guess the alternative would be they can go to a class with older grades.

And I think that can work one grade up.

That can work within an elementary school.

And my school had a walk to math program where third graders could walk to a fourth grade math class if they were ready for that, fourth graders could walk to fifth grade, and some of the fifth graders could take a sixth grade math course that we offered within the fifth grade classrooms.

And that worked because the scope of the acceleration was limited.

But that's not what people are asking for.

They're asking for unlimited individualized acceleration.

And I have to wonder, do you want your third grader to go to the high school and to be taking classes as a 9 or 10-year-old with a high school student, like with a 15-year-old?

What is the goal here, and what would that actually be like?

Ask your wife if she thinks that would be a good idea for your third grader, because...

it's only in a very strange way of thinking that that sounds like a good idea and i also have to wonder like what is the rush now i totally understand wanting to get to calculus in high school i totally understand wanting to be ready for more advanced math courses in college and a lot of kids frankly are not ready for calculus in high school they don't have the opportunity to take it or maybe even if it's offered they don't have the preparation leading up to it And I think that's an opportunity for improvement.

I think there do need to be opportunities for calculus in high school, including AP Calculus BC, which was not available to me.

I think that's a good thing to strive for.

But this idea that like every kid has to be a prodigy, like if you have a prodigy and you wanna pull them out of school and let them do math for nine hours a day with a tutor or on a computer or whatever, go ahead but the idea that this should be something that public schools or even private schools routinely try to offer i think just doesn't show any understanding of what it is like to be at school to be a student to be around other kids to be part of a class to be participating in a group learning activity and this kind of atomic view of the individual student as just a brain to fill up with more and more advanced math without really thinking like, why do we want that advanced math?

Why do I need my third grader to be learning algebra too?

Like, what is the purpose of that for their life?

They are not just a learner of math.

They are not just a brain.

They're also a person.

And I think we risk doing some weird stuff to our kids that's not good for them when we push acceleration too far and when we try to approach education in an overly individualistic way.

Let me know what you think.