Jo Boaler is a progressive “Professor of Mathematics Education” who can’t do basic math, and has ruined math for many students in California by getting education officials to mess up and dumb down the way math is taught. Democratic officials in California think she is a genius. But she isn’t — she is so ignorant she can’t even do fractions!
As Lin Huang points out, “The glaring mistakes in Jo Boaler’s new book ‘Math-ish’ reveal her unsolid and erroneous conceptual understanding of fractions and simple multiplication.” Huang shows a page in which Boaler incorrectly multiplies both the numerator and denominator of a fraction when multiplying the fraction by a whole number, rather than just multiplying the fraction’s numerator by the whole number.
In short, notes a former Education Department lawyer, “California’s progressive math guru can’t do basic math — such as fractions — yet is the leading education professor cited about math instruction. California and San Francisco rely on her debunked progressive ideas about math education, which dumb down math instruction.”
Education expert Joanne Jacobs describes how Boaler’s ignorant approach to math instruction have left many students worse at doing math; that’s especially true in San Francisco, where progressive school officials wrongly delayed algebra for many students based on Boaler’s faddish ideas — which harmed their ability to pursue a career that requires advanced math, and reduced San Francisco students’ test scores:
San Francisco Unified decided in 2015 to delay algebra till ninth grade and place low, average and high achievers in the same classes. The goal was to improve achievement for black and Hispanic students, preparing more for advanced math.
That didn’t happen, concludes a study by a team of Stanford professors. “Large ethnoracial gaps in advanced math course-taking . . . did not change.” Black students aren’t more likely to enroll in AP math [than before]…
Test data from 2015 to 2019 shows that racial “achievement gaps have widened,” wrote Tom Loveless last year. The district “is headed in the wrong direction on equity.” Black and Hispanic 11th-graders in San Francisco earned “appalling” scores on the state math test, “about the same as or lower than the typical fifth-grader” in the state..
A proposed new California math framework encourages other districts to copy San Francisco’s math reforms … writes Sarah Schwartz in Education Week. Math reformer Jo Boaler, a Stanford education professor and advocate of the new framework, co-authored a commentary, How one city got math right, in the Hechinger Report.
“Algebra for none” made it harder for achievers to succeed, without helping low achievers, writes Fordham’s Jeanette Luna. Families face a “nightmare of workarounds” to get their high-achieving children on track for advanced math, write Rex Ridgeway and David Margulies in a San Francisco Examiner commentary.
“Families with resources turn to fee-required online algebra 1 courses in eighth grade, outside the public school system, or enroll their kids in private schools,” they write. Those who can’t afford it must take a compression class that combines advanced algebra and pre-calculus or take a year of double math to get on track for AP Calculus.
