Oh wow... this article resonates with me and is bringing up some stuff for me as a parent.

My son was in the 8th grade the first year or two that CA rolled out this replace Algebra 2 with Data Science. The Piedmont school district selected this ridiculous book for the course that contained only problems, no lessons. I could go into a deep diatribe about this book, and the course design, but it did things like 'use exponents and exponent notation without introducing what exponents are and how they work... un-flipping believable.

I scheduled a parent-teacher meeting to discuss my concerns about the course design and book... and was assured by the assistant principal that the course was designed by experts and the book was carefully selected and was written by professors with expertise in math education. I. got. nowhere.

Here are vents/beefs with our education system today, as it pertains to math & science:

- What the heck happened to using a nice print book? It is understood that people learn better from reading and working with print books. Even in the 'every kid has a phone', screens everywhere, age... I have found this to be true for my kids and other parents have found the same. kids do better at math/science/history working out of a good physical book. Somehow, we can afford iPad's for every kid but we can't afford books?

- the 8th grade math book above was 80 USD for a hard copy, which I bought so I could tutor my son at home... absolutely deplorable. Not only was the book's content garbage... but the paper and print quality was also garbage. Somehow, I can buy a beautiful hardback textbook on an esoteric math topic for as little 50 USD... meanwhile, a 8th grade textbook is reaming the state coffers. We have so much economic capture and profiteering in K-12 education and it is disgusting... all K-12 content should be creative commons licensed and book cost should cover printing costs and meager profit and that's it (think www.openintro.org).

- We have some very special idiots in our public education system and they are "trying out education theories" on our kids, and we are letting them. There was nothing wrong with the math education 20 years ago, or even 40 years ago. Math is hard, that is okay... not everyone has to be a math genius. Learning math well takes time, being kind & compassionate to ourselves / our kids, and appreciating the grind a little bit. Even if there was something wrong with our classical math education, we could look at other countries who are kicking our ass in math education and see what they're doing... hints: teachers are treated/paid better, they use print textbooks with lots of carefully constructed lessons (graphics) and worked examples, gradual introduction of ideas in class with ample time for discussion, lots of spaced repetition, and lots of exercises starting with "very easy", to build confidence and enjoyment of progress/understanding, and moving gradually to more challenging.

This 8th grade books I refer to above was doing absolutely crazy stuff like throwing a couple problems out on average and standard deviation (again, with no lessons in book... just problems) and then, two problems later, asking them interpret box plots (again, without a lesson on box plots)... insanity. Kids in the class were so lost and disheartened; they all felt stupid. I had to keep telling my son, "you're not stupid... this book is completely ridiculous. The people who wrote this book, and the people who selected this book for your class, are out of touch with reality."