We hear you. I’m attaching your own tweets for future reference.

https://twitter.com/mpershan/status/1220813980882677761

As I said in a recent tweet, the Desmos curriculum “should seek greater control over the drill practice kids do, to prevent teachers from supplementing drill practice from another source. When drill practice is tightly aligned to thoughtful lessons, it can deepen the lessons — it doesn’t have to feel like drill.”

The Desmos graphing tool is very nice. I use it frequently, and find it quite intuitive. I’ve long since abandoned all the alternatives on offer. I’m not a hater.

However.

When you show your graphs about students’ reactions, they are all proxies for learning. “The lessons help me learn math” and “I enjoy learning math using these lessons” are not the same as actual evidence that using Desmos is more effective than other methods. I’m quite prepared to believe that the Desmos lessons are better, but what you present as evidence isn’t good evidence. (The PISA results are quite conclusive on this: thinking you are doing well is not the same as actually doing well — US students score much higher on “I am good at Math” than Singaporeans, while being considerably worse at any actual Math.)

Likewise the teacher graph shows value judgements. Value judgements are worth considering, but teachers are overly prone to consider engagement as a measure of learning — and it just isn’t.

Please, do the actual studies, in as blind an environment as you can. Ideally, get a neutral party to do it. Compare learning in a standard method, compared to your alternative. It won’t be easy — I get that. But until you do it properly, all we have is endorsements.

I don’t buy a grill because George Forman endorses it, and I won’t buy Desmos because some random teachers endorse it either.

So true. Seems a pertinent and timely perspective, given the re-considerations currently under way for high school standards and threads of 9-12 math pathways.

Lol. Looking forward to getting your feedback, Chris. Best to you and Penelope.

We welcome the comparison! Somewhere close to half the company has probably watched and discussed Brett Victor’s Inventing on Principle talk.

Thanks for the consideration here, Hilary. We’ll keep it in mind. (Wondering why 9-12 doesn’t take its curriculum queues from K-8 instead!)