Education Doth Make Fools of Us All

I am a mathematics educator by training and vocation, meaning I teach students who want to be math teachers, and I research how mathematics is taught and learned. And by nature and choice I'm an ivory-tower academician, who doesn't really want to deal with the politics that are an inherent part of education. That isn't always possible, of course, seeing as how the Math Wars rage on, particularly in my little corner of the U.S.

This blog will let me blow off some steam, craft some arguments, and refine my thinking about education in general and mathematics education in particular. Feel free to join in.

But as for today's story: I'm always amazed how easy it is for PhD's, trained in rational, logical, scientific thinking, who pride themselves, in fact, on being logical and objective in their work, to become completely irrational when it comes to education. It's like an M.D. leaving his research lab, coming home, and sacrificing chickens to try to cure a cold.

I was visited in my office by a colleague, who was hoping to gain my support on a proposal to adopt a mathematics competency test for those wishing to become elementary school teachers. The argument was essentially this: Massachusetts recognized that their elementary school teachers didn't have enough math content knowledge, so they created some guidelines for the mathematical training of prospective elementary teachers, and a math competency test for them to pass before being granted a teaching certificate. Apparently they did this about 10 years ago, and now, according to my colleague, their student are scoring at the top of the NAEP test in math. Later, he told me that they had really just started requiring the test a year or so ago, and the initial passing rate was something like 27%

Now I haven't bothered to check on any of these facts yet, but even so I can say with some confidence that if they just started giving the test, and if very few of their teachers passed, then the test hasn't had time to have any effect on the bulk of their elementary school teachers. In short, IT WASN'T THE TEST THAT MADE THEIR NAEP SCORES GO UP! (sorry for screaming, but I get tired of this stuff). And yet that was the clear implication of his earlier argument; he wanted me to believe that if we do what Massachusetts did, our NAEP scores will go up too.

Mathematicians and scientists are very proud of the hard thinking and relentless logic it takes to figure things out in their field. Apparently educational issues don't demand the same level of rigor -- they can just magically tell what needs to be done there. I would say they apply the Urban Legend Test to educational thought: if it happened to a friend of a friend, it's true.

I'll see if I can track down the facts of the matter in Massachusetts. Perhaps I misunderstood the argument. But I don't think so. I think it was the usual snake-oil.

Welcome to my world.