California’s Math Misadventure Is About to Go National

“…I am a professional mathematician, a graduate of the public schools of a middle-class community in New York, and the son of a high-school math teacher. I have been the director of undergraduate studies in math at Stanford University for a decade. When California released a revised draft of the math framework last year, I decided someone should read the whole thing, so I dove in. Sometimes, as I pored over the CMF, I could scarcely believe what I was reading. The document cited research that hadn’t been peer-reviewed; justified sweeping generalizations by referencing small, tightly focused studies or even unrelated research; and described some papers as reaching nearly the opposite conclusions from what they actually say.

The document tried hard to convince readers that it was based on a serious reading of neuroscience research. The first chapter, for example, cited two articles to claim that “the highest achieving people have more interconnected brains,” implying that this has something to do with learning math. But neither paper says anything about math education.

The CMF is meant only to guide local districts, but in practice it influences the choices they make about what and how to teach. Even so, the version ultimately adopted by the State Board of Education is likely to distort math instruction for years to come. Armed with trendy buzzwords and false promises of greater equity, California is promoting an approach to math instruction that’s likely to reduce opportunities for disadvantaged students—in the state and wherever else educators follow the state’s lead…”

Democrats. You can’t make it up. If you have children in public schools, it’s on you.