Richard Lesh, Ph.D. has an opinion

It would be charitable to say that the Seattle court decision was based on an understanding of teaching and learning that is simplistic, naïve, or uninformed. But, in fact, the people who have propagated these ("A")distortions of truth about education are sufficiently well educated that it is hard to imagine that they are not distorting facts intentionally. And, in the process of coming to a decision about what textbooks to adopt, there has been sufficient discussion of educational research in Seattle that anyone who wanted to honestly answer such questions based on the existing body of educational research could easily have ("B") considered the scientific evidence. Unfortunately, precisely because the propagators of untruths in these attacks include university professors, ("C") I must believe that it is simply a lie to claim that research has shown that inquiry-oriented textbooks have been proven to be ineffective at teaching basic or advanced mathematics skills to a large percentage of the student population, or that they have been proven to be ineffective at addressing the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and non-economically disadvantaged students, or between non-Caucasian students and Caucasian students.

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In regard to ("A") ("B") & ("C"), it seems that Dr. Lesh needs to get out more or read some statistics from the Bellevue school district or Seattle or many other districts using "inquiry Based materials".

Bellevue went inquiry whole hog with TERC/Investigations, CMP, and Core-Plus
the results were pathetic for Black and Hispanic Students. Contrary to the opinions of the distinguished professor.

Here are those Bellevue changes over a decade:

4th
MATH Change
-35.3 Black
-13.1 Hispanic
READ Change
-5.1 Black
18.7 Hispanic
WRITE Change
4.2 Black
7.8 Hispanic


7th
MATH Change
-21.1 Black
-18.3 Hispanic
READ Change
-24.1 Black
10.9 Hispanic
WRITE Change
-24.7 Black
0.7 Hispanic


10th
MATH Change
-17.3 Black
-2.5 Hispanic
READ Change
2.4 Black
23.8 Hispanic
WRITE Change
7.2 Black
10.1 Hispanic


Average of all three levels

MATH Change
-24.6 Black
-11.3 Hispanic
READ Change
-8.9 Black
17.8 Hispanic
WRITE Change
-4.4 Black
6.2 Hispanic
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Yes Richard Lesh has an opinion, but it is not supported by the evidence.