Math Education Debate Goes as Expected

A policy debate about whether to teach Algebra in middle school has embroiled Berkeley and Stanford professors on opposite sides. Tweets by the professors and others have escalated into charges of racism and police harassment.

Background: non-white, non-Asian students have fallen behind in math, and the State has produced a 900(!)-page math framework to foster "educational equity." [bold added]

Jo Boaler

Stanford University Professor Jo Boaler has led the effort to rewrite the state’s math framework with a stated focus on students of color and English learners. Her work is now the catalyst for a proposed statewide math framework similar to San Francisco’s, which pushed Algebra 1 to ninth grade.

But Boaler’s work has drawn ire from those who want algebra as an option for eighth-graders and worry that without it, taking calculus in high school — which selective colleges often expect — becomes difficult...

Elizabeth Statmore

That debate boiled over Tuesday after a math teacher at San Francisco’s Lowell High School who opposes Boaler’s approach posted on Twitter a contract that seemed to show the professor made $5,000 an hour to train teachers in the Oxnard school district...

Yet the contract included not only Boaler’s fees, but her home address — which, Twitter notified the original poster, was a violation of the social media site’s policies. The Lowell teacher, Elizabeth Statmore, said she wasn’t aware the contract included a home address and deleted the posts.

After Elizabeth Statmore took down her tweet about Jo Boaler's fees, the personalization of the debate could have been defused. Then a Berkeley math professor got involved. (bold added]

Jelani Nelson

UC Berkeley Professor Jelani Nelson, who teachers electrical engineering and computer science, however, retweeted one of Statmore’s posts about the contract, criticizing Boaler for “alarmingly lucrative consulting deals.”

Nelson told The Chronicle Tuesday evening that he didn’t retweet the post that included the address.

Boaler said after his retweet that she contacted Nelson via email, notifying him that police and lawyers were taking up “the sharing of private details about me on social media.”

“I was shocked to see that you are taking part in spreading misinformation and harassing me online,” she wrote to him in an email.

Nelson, who is Black, then posted the email online, accusing Boaler, who is white, of unjustly calling the police on a Black person.

“A professor just threatened me with police. After BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Golfcart Gail, and all the memes, we now have Retweet Rachel,” he posted on Twitter. “Public advisory: don’t call the cops on black people for no reason. Black people disagreeing with you on Twitter is not a crime.”

The people in this debate do upend a few stereotypes. Lowell teacher Elizabeth Statmore calls for more academic rigor, as does Jelani Nelson, despite his being quick to play the race card.

Nevertheless, it's a very sad commentary on the times that discussions over serious matters seem inevitably to be pulled toward the racial and sexual identity of the speakers, their biases, and motivations (which people who don't know them personally seem easily to ascertain). The accusations are blasted widely on Twitter, then the mob gets involved, resulting in threats to people and property. One can barely recall the substantive arguments.

After all that sturm und drang, a few changes have been made to the proposed framework:

After extensive feedback, the framework toned down some of the social justice language that inflamed critics. However, it changed from the current framework to suggest Algebra 1 in middle schools should be a local decision. The state Board of Education is expected to vote on the framework in July.

When your humble blogger went to school, Algebra in eighth grade was the norm; it was offered in seventh grade to "advanced" students. 55 years later, the educational establishment seems to be saying that Algebra in eighth grade is either too tough or shouldn't be taught for "social justice" reasons. I've long since ceased to be angry at the current state of affairs and am just sad.