Facing attacks from right-wing pundits and scrutiny from lawmakers, Virginia's superintendent of public instruction said on Monday that the state is not eliminating advanced high school mathematics courses.
Superintendent James Lane said the Virginia Department of Education is in the early stages of a regularly scheduled revision of its mathematics Standards of Learning, which guide school systems in their course offerings across all areas of instruction.
The ideas — detailed online as part of a program called the Virginia Mathematics Pathways Initiative — include rejiggering eighth-, ninth- and 10th-grade math courses to place a greater emphasis on fields including data science and data analytics, Lane said.
Lane added that these suggestions are still just that — suggestions. The department is currently gathering public feedback and has yet to draft a new version of its mathematics standards.
But these facts were obscured over the past week as outrage built online, fueled by social media posts from prominent Virginians and copious coverage from right-wing news outlets.
The kerfuffle began when Loudoun County School Board member Ian Serotkin (Blue Ridge) posted on his public Facebook page about the initiative.
As currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade", Serotkin wrote. "That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this".
In multiple rounds of video calls with reporters Monday, Lane said this assertion is false. He said the initiative does not propose eliminating accelerated math classes, nor does it require all students in a grade to take the same math class no matter their level of ability.
An earlier version of the Pathway Initiative website may explain some of the confusion. Virginia Department of Education staffers updated the website over the weekend, and the new version has 13 bullet points that explain what the initiative does and does not do. For example, it does not "eliminate . . . the study of calculus" or "the content from Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra 2".
The old version explaining the initiative, though, offered just two short, jargon-laden paragraphs declaring that it would help students "be successful in college and/or the workforce and . . . 'life ready'. " And under a question asking about "goals and desired outcomes", it listed "improving equity in mathematics learning opportunities" as the first bullet point. (In the new version, that bullet point has been moved to second-to-last place.)
