The real math crisis isn’t the test scores. It’s the test

This past school year, Cambridge, Massachusetts, placed every eighth grader in Algebra I. It didn’t go well. Ultimately, more than 60% of rising ninth graders will repeat the course.  The consequences were immediate: weeping students, angry parents, and roiling debate about the rollout, teacher support, and tracking. Lost in the shuffle was this essential point: We teach obsolete rote math that adults don’t use, while missing entirely the math that defines our lives.   Let’s start with the math…