Tuesday, December 16, 2008

NMAP aftershock - Edu-Speakers speak

It appears that the National Math Advisory Panel report has ruffled some of the feathers of those who support entrenched edu-speak views.

http://edr.sagepub.com/current.dtl

9 comments:

  1. Are any of the papers included in this AERA issue written by mathematicians?

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  2. NMAP was as much an indictment of the AERA as the authors themselves. What would you expect?

    https://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/News_Media/News_Releases/2008/ER_Devotes_Issue_to_Report_of_NMAP.pdf

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  3. Excellent question. I do not know.

    Jo Boaler from University of Sussex ... left Stanford under a cloud. More fuzzy educator than mathematician.

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  4. The AERA publishes research that is outright fraudulent - it is a public nuisance.

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  5. What does the AERA do when it can't convince the public that their research has any merit? They hire the Hechinger Institute (The Truth Squad).

    http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/3703/04EDR08_174-175.pdf

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  6. New Century High Schools


    http://www.policystudies.com/studies/school/New%20Century%20year%201.html

    Tapping Into Education Research

    A Hechinger Institute-American Educational Research Association Collaboration
    March 24th - 26th, 2008
    Sheraton New York ~ Liberty Suite 3, 3rd floor
    New York City
    Underwritten by the Spencer Foundation, Chicago, IL

    Here's a point man for Arne Duncan's 'national' education reform - Kenneth Wong.

    http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Political_Science/people/facultypage.php?id=1127249647

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  7. How do you intend to beat poverty?
    Reformer: With a stick.

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  8. WASL Sample Question using Stick Math

    Terri has 3 memory sticks a 4GB, a 2GB and a 1GB. She has several games scattered amongst them and have added up how much free space there is between them. It is enough to get one last game on there but the question is whether I can re arrange the existing files in such a way that I will be able to create just that one big space on one of the sticks. Help Terri by choosing the file size that would be best, and explain your reasoning.

    File and size (MB)
    A) 377
    B) 511
    C) 434
    D) 492
    E) 769
    F) 1264
    G) 428
    H) 822
    I) 1005


    This reminds of a piece of AERA research I read today regarding a new fish adaptation.

    According to math education researchers, female mosquito fish preferred to join shoals that were larger by just one fish, 'preferring shoals of four fish rather than three fish, and consistently preferring shoals of three fish over those containing just two.'"

    This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys, dolphins, and humans with very limited mathematical ability.

    "We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities."

    Core plus says all fish are successful, not just humans.

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  9. A month ago, I wrote enrollment in Washington was down 50,000 students and today I check enrollment and sure enough its back up to last year's level.

    SPS blog reported on Gregoire's cuts in I-728 and wrote "funding remains flat, despite a 'spike' in enrollment SPS enrollment is actually down (officially flat) at SPS - and so is Washington State's enrollment. So what are they talking aobut? Am I missing something?

    The librarian told me today that officially our district dropout rate is 17%, but unofficially she says its 33%.

    ReplyDelete