The Los Angeles Times – Sonali Kohli
“Eighth grade math is changing: instead of emphasizing Algebra I where only some students thrive, many schools are placing all students in the same general class that covers several concepts. Common Core standards for the eighth grade call for all students to learn the same general math concepts, a departure from the push toward Algebra I that middle schools made in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Common Core is a set of English and math learning standards that most states have adopted, meant to be more rigorous and uniform than states’ previous learning goals. A new study from the Brown Center at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit research group, found that the percentage of students in advanced math classes has decreased, while the share of students in general math has gone up.”(more)