Math is racist. I've done a number of posts on it, as have my colleagues. I remember one lively debate on Twitter with teachers, educators, and professors arguing that two plus two can equal five. We've done posts about how showing your work is imposing "whiteness." We wrote about a Boston-area school that had eliminated advanced math in middle school in the name of equity. Other schools ruled that all students would follow the same curriculum until their junior year, when those who wanted would be allowed to take advanced math courses. Seattle's K-12 "Math Ethnic Studies Framework" had as one of its themes the "Power of Oppression." I did a post last year about California's adoption of a new math framework emphasizing "equity and cultural responsiveness." Sarah Schwartz wrote for Education Week:
The California framework encourages teachers in this work on two fronts. First, the collaborative, inquiry-based approach is meant to support students from all backgrounds to find a sense of belonging in math classrooms and to engage their participation in meaningful conversations about math. Second, math content itself can help students use math to examine inequities and address important issues in their lives and communities.
Such an orientation toward social justice has faced sharp criticism from some members of the math community. In an open letter in 2021, over a thousand signatories—many of them math and science professors and business professionals—outlined pieces of a prior draft of the framework that they said would politicize the subject in a “potentially disastrous way.”
Sanjana Friedman has written a piece about the architect of California's "equity-based algebra."
She's a Stanford professor of math education who's arguably most responsible for the new California Math Framework — a set of curriculum recommendations that advocate against teaching algebra to most of the state's gifted middle-schoolers in the name of equity.
— Pirate Wires (@PirateWires) March 27, 2024
But she's sent… pic.twitter.com/tKbtQUfzOL
But she's sent her own children to a $48,000/year private school that teaches its middle schoolers algebra, and now she's accused of significantly distorting citations in her research to support conclusions the original studies never reached. Much of this research underpins the new Framework.
Meet Jo Boaler, California's architect of "equity-based algebra" in @metaversehell's piece today.
Jo Boaler wrote about the Common Core approach to math to concerned parents:
The Common Core does not eliminate computation, calculation, practice, or homework. Rather it seeks a balance in which conceptual understanding is not sacrificed for memorizing procedures. There is an emphasis on enabling students to make sense of the math and seeing math as a way to solve real life problems. Students become better problem solvers when they understand both the problem and the concepts involved in solving it. In the traditional approach, many students have memorized formulas but don’t know when to apply them. Students who develop a deep understanding of mathematics can derive the formula when they need it, know when they need it, and don’t apply the wrong formula to a situation because it’s the one they have memorized. Homework and practice are still valuable and teachers should have a system to capture their students’ progress, but teachers might rethink the purpose of homework, perhaps scaling down the number of problems with the expectation that students show their thinking and demonstrate understanding using multiple representations.
She claimed it was a disservice to present math "narrowly defined as skills and answer-getting."
It's not California, but I recently did a piece on exactly zero students passing the math proficiency test in 53 Illinois public schools.
And people wonder why we have a problem with DEI programs. You can't force "equity" on math proficiency. I don't want the person who designed the doors of my Boeing jet to have been taught "equity-based algebra." It's a real fear of mine that so much of what we've built up over the centuries is going to be lost on future generations, where there's no one left to build bridges or design buildings. The inventors of Neuralink didn't take Common Core math.
This is the worst kind of racism.
— Bill Weber 🕎✝️ (@Bill59651691) March 27, 2024
As President Joe Biden put it, "Poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids."
"Equity" is a mechanism/excuse to attain communism.
— Captain Wynsum (@CaptainWynsum) March 27, 2024
In Education "No one left behind" means no one gets ahead to reach their individual potential. Regression to the lowest common denominator does not serve society or the individual. pic.twitter.com/fzuHrPMM8P
And here's how that policy played out in practice. (SFUSD is now rolling it back starting next school year.) pic.twitter.com/sidqOo9fku
— Sanjana Friedman (@metaversehell) March 27, 2024
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