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Democratize Math, Says Boaler

Writing in the Atlantic, education researcher Jo Boaler argues that mathematics as taught in U.S. schools needs to be broadened to include not just procedure execution, but also "problem solving, reasoning, representing ideas in multiple forms, and question asking."

Boaler sees the Common Core as a step in the right direction and thinks the "opening up" the new curriculum will promote will engage more students in mathematics and enable more of them to succeed.

She also believes that the Common Core moves the math taught in school closer to the math that citizens actually need to know:

In our new technological world, employers do not need people who can calculate correctly or fast, they need people who can reason about approaches, estimate and verify results, produce and interpret different powerful representations, and connect with other people’s mathematical ideas.

Read the piece.

Start Date: 
Tuesday, November 26, 2013