revision

I've just revised the "Phase 4" narrative.

I can't tell how comprehensible this is to folks -- it's still not really comprehensible to me.

I am told, reliably, that in the past many tears have been shed over the Phase 4 course at the middle school in all three grades, 6 to 8.

To my knowledge, the district never once asked itself whether all that pain had to be.

Children struggling and failing in "accelerated" math was seen as natural, normal, and inevitable by educators and parents alike. Some kids had what it took to succeed; the other kids didn't. That's life.

Thus the normal trajectory of any given Phase 4 cohort, the 30 to 35% of kids tracked into the algebra-in-8th-grade track in 6th grade, was a war of attrition. One by one, kids fell by the wayside, until, in 8th grade, their numbers had been whittled from 3 classes down to just 2.

I think, all of a sudden, this year, things are different.

The parents are different.

Back to School Night, inside the Math A classroom, felt like a bit of a revolutionary moment. A happy revolution.

It was happy because everyone was there. At least, everyone I knew who had started out in the class, back in 6th grade, was still there.

Not only that, but at least 2 kids who'd dropped out of the track had dropped back in, and the teacher was complaining about the enormous size of the class. Twenty-six kids in the room; I doubt the school has seen that before.

I figured they must have divided the three classes from last year into just two for 8th grade as they used to do. That's why C's class was so big.

I was wrong. They still have 3 classes of kids in the track this year, taking algebra in the 8th grade.

It's not that these kids are doing any better than kids in previous years, as far as I know. My own child certainly is not, and he has yet to be alone in a boat. Something else is different.

Many things have happened over the past two years, since we came to the middle school. For one, the legendary math chair resigned. When she went, I imagine her aura of authority went with her.

The new young teacher didn't inspire confidence, and even if she had she was still a novice; parents must have begun to think perhaps the problems didn't lie within their children.

Meanwhile there were and are 3 vocal parents in this class alone, one of whom was himself a NY math teacher with 34 years' experience.

As for me, I spent a great deal of time repeating the KIPP/Europe/Asia message -- algebra in the 8th grade for one and all -- and I'm certain this had an effect. People here are nothing if not quick on the uptake. Once you know algebra in the 8th grade is an international norm, you can't give the math department the same credence when they tell you it's not.

As to that, one of the middle school math teachers has told parents that, realistically, only 10% of Irvington students should take algebra in the 8th grade.

If you changed "algebra" to, say, trigonometry, I would agree.

Of course, the truth is that I don't know what has happened here, nor do I know whether this is a real change, or a blip on the radar. For whatever reason, this fall, there we all were. Back in the saddle, bloodied (some of us) but unboughed, unto the breach!

Everyone looked happy. The air was alive with something that felt like excitement, the math teacher's jokes were funny, the math lab guy opened his mouth and uttered the word "remediation" and you could tell (well, I could tell) that your child's days of trying to pass for gifted in order to learn algebra in the 8th grade might be drawing to a close.

That is change.