Tuesday, September 16, 2014

It's not about politics!

On progressive ideals and reform math...

Alice Crary and W. Stephen Wilson. The Faulty Logic of the ‘Math Wars’. New York Times, New York, NY, June 16 2013.

"it would be naïve to assume that we can somehow promote original thinking in specific areas simply by calling for subject-related creative reasoning"

"It is easy to see why the mantle of progressivism is often taken to belong to advocates of reform math. But it doesn’t follow that this take on the math wars is correct. We could make a powerful case for putting the progressivist shoe on the other foot if we could show that reformists are wrong to deny that algorithm-based calculation involves an important kind of thinking."



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W. S. Wilson. SBAC Math Specifications Don’t Add Up. 
Flypaper, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, September 19, 2011.
It's [23] on the Professor's website here.

The conceptualization of mathematical understanding on which SBAC will base its assessments is deeply flawed. The consortium focuses on the Mathematical Practices of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M) at the expense of content, and they outline plans to assess communication skills that have nothing to do with mathematical understanding.


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