Just impossibly excited about tomorrow’s Northern California math conference. Here’s my tentative dance card, in chronological order, plus a few alternates.

1. Bix Beaman. Breathtakingly Gorgeous 107 Acres? How’d They Get That? Also: Tom Murray. Blood Count: Are You At Risk?
2. Steven Leinwand. Converting Typical PD into Real Teacher Development Practices. Also: I’m doing the same talk in this slot I did at Palm Springs last month and will do again at NCTM in April before taking it out back and giving it the Old Yeller.
3. Harold Jacobs. Mathematical Snapshots of 2011. Also: Brian Lim. Make Use of Structure in High School Mathematics Classes. Scott Farrand, Rick West. Polynomial Surprises. Allan Bellman. You’ve Checked for Understanding – Now What!?
4. Michael Serra. Teaching Sequential Reasoning Through Games and Puzzles. Also: Breedeen Murray. Beyond Sudoku: Use Logic Puzzles to Develop Reasoning Skills.
5. Christopher Mackenzie. An Appropriate Tool for Algebra is a Dynamic Spreadsheet! Also: Avery Pickford. Making Common Core Process Standards More than an Afterthought

Other places you’ll find me:

1. Seeley’s opening night keynote.
2. Schoenfeld’s Sunday morning keynote.
3. I’ll be doing one of the talks at Key Curriculum Press’ Ignite event Saturday night.
4. Lunch on Saturday you’ll find me at the picnic tables as you walk from the venue towards the water. All welcome.

Last April, fourteen of Palo Alto High School’s twenty math teachers petitioned their school board [pdf] against raising graduation requirements to include Algebra II:

We live in an affluent community. Most of our students are fortunate to come from families where education matters and parents have the means and will to support and guide their children in tandem with us, their teachers. Not all of them. [..] We are concerned about the others who, for reasons that are often objective (poor math background, lack of support at home, low retention rate, lack of maturity, etc) can’t pass our Algebra II regular lane course. Many of these are [Voluntary Transfer Program] students or under-represented minorities.

Since those students objectively can’t pass Algebra II, the next appropriate step is to compile a list of those students and prevent their enrollment in Algebra II in the first place. Otherwise, you’re putting them in a position to care about passing a class we can be objectively certain they will fail. If I were a parent of one of those students, this determinism would probably drive me out of my mind.

The signatories are Radu Toma, Suzanne Antink, Kathy Bowers, Judy Choy, Arne Lim, Deanna Chute, Natalie Simison, Misha Stempel, Maria Rao, Charlotte Harris, Scott Friedland, Lisa Kim, Ambika Nangia, and David Baker.

Featured Comment

Jason Buell:

Their hearts I think were in the right places but they whiffed badly. The point isn’t can every kid take Alg 2, but should they.

2012 Jan 16: Coverage from the San Jose Mercury News.

“There are five birds and three worms.” That’s the set-up.

The pay-off is that Tom Hudson found significant improvement in achievement when he asked primary students, “How many birds won’t get a worm?” instead of “How many more birds than worms are there?”

Two things that probably go without saying:

1. Your students with poor math achievement may be achieving poorly at something besides math. Like language.
2. It’s hard not to love a job that rewards this kind of obsessive attention to detail.

Ed Begle:

Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.

If anyone tries to tell you the problems of math education, educational technology, or capital-E education are simple, or that the solutions are simple, or that the people who don’t accept those solutions are simple-minded, kick the crash bar and don’t stop running. They’re wrong and none of this work would be very much fun if it were that simple anyway.

Featured Comment:

Peps Mccrea:

Ever heard of Veik’s law of commensurate complexity? He suggested that no model can simultaneously be both: simple, general, and accurate. It can be 2 of the 3, but not all 3. ‘Simple’ can be important, because complexity is difficult to manage. Particularly in a world where no one person can know enough to make an informed decision. It helps get things done. Just sometimes at the expense of the general and the accurate.

Scott McLeod on people who say, “We didn’t have computers when I was in school and I turned out okay.”

Is it wrong of me to wish that people who espouse this view be prohibited from holding political office or serving on school boards?

Stephen Downes pivots off McLeod and offers his own response to those people:

You didn’t have Segways in schools when you were a kid and look how the world turned out. We don’t get to make those mistakes a second time. We need to get it right, now. That’s why we need Segways in schools.

He actually cites computers, not Segways, but it’s the same logical error. Likewise, McLeod admitted he couldn’t think of any elected officials who actually thought that way. It’s the same old harangue, only now they’re making up villains. They’re fabricating cretins and idiots and then criticizing them for their idiocy and cretinism.

2011 Nov 7. Scott McLeod notes that just because he couldn’t give me a link to those comments doesn’t mean he hasn’t heard them. Which is absolutely correct and qualifies my comments here. Here is my response.