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What can you say about an eighty-eight year old organization that died? That it was arrogant and complacent? That it loved power, money, and influence (or at least the illusion of them) more than being effective, and blew it all anyway? In March, NCTM released its latest position paper, " The Role of Technology in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics ." This paper also appears in its entirety in the May/June NCTM News Bulletin, along with a bland piece on the National Math Panel Report (NMP), and an equally bland first "President's Message" from newly-installed Henry S. Kepner, Jr.  Put them all (and more) together and you may get a sense of why I am so disenchanted with NCTM as an effective organization we need to lead us towards meaningful change in mathematics education. Though it us the favorite target of the various anti-reform spokes-holes, nay-sayers, and prophets (profits?) of doom, both individuals and groups who decry every new idea about math cont...

In the Math Wars, when it comes to hating progressive reform there are pack animals and solitary beasts. There are the hyenas of Mathematically Correct and NYC-HOLD, and then there is the lone, if rabid, wolf, William G. Quirk . Our Bill has long been a voice of prejudice and extremism in the face of efforts to improve the quality of mathematics teaching and learning in the USA. His latest screed comes predictably on the heels of the all-but-useless political tract spewed forth by the National Math Panel : our Willie's (ahem) contribution to the Math Wars is " 2008 TERC Math vs. 2008 National Math Panel Recommendations ." This is a political tract so execrable that it deserves to be taken apart piece by piece and exposed for the ugly propaganda it is. Let's start with the title. There are three fundamental bits of idiocy in it. First, there is no such thing as "TERC Math." TERC is not a textbook or a series of textbooks. It's "a non-profit research...

After my previous post about a recent article in the NEW YORK TIMES about some "earth-shaking" cognitive science research, I was reprimanded on math-teach@mathforum.org by Mark Roberts for not having the decency to read any of the original research. While I don't feel too guilty about my critique of Kenneth Chang's credulous reportage (I would think a science writer would by nature want to be skeptical, but my take on Chang's coverage is that he was not only anything but skeptical, but also inane in his including a ridiculous and irrelevant problem about trains, as if they had ANYTHING to do with the research. It's one thing to swallow the conclusions without questioning in the slightest the experiment itself or the implications being made (well beyond the parameters of the data), but quite another to try to sex up the story by including a tired old example from grandpa's algebra nightmares and pretending it's relevant to the issues. I wonder if Mr...