The National Mathematics Advisory Panel ’ An Update
By Fernando Q. Gouvêa
The May/June issue of FOCUS included a report about the creation, by
Presidential order, of a National Mathematics Advisory Panel, intended to
advise the President and his Secretary of Education about the results of
research in mathematics education and how they might be used to improve the
teaching of mathematics in American schools. Since then, the members of the
NMP have been appointed and its first meetings have occurred.
Larry Faulkner, president of the Houston Endowment and President Emeritus of
the University of Texas at Austin, will be chairing the panel. The
vice-chair will be Camilla Benbow, Dean of Education and Human Development,
Vanderbilt University, Peabody College. Other members likely to be known to
our readers include Deborah Ball of the University of Michigan, Francis
Fennell (president of NCTM), Liping Ma of the Carnegie Foundation, Wilfried
Schmid of Harvard, Jim Simmons of Renaissance Technologies, and Hung-Hsi Wu
of Berkeley. A full list of members can be found online at the NMP web site,
at
http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/mathpanel/.
The first meeting of the panel happened on May 22 and the second was on June
28 and 29. Transcripts of the meetings are posted online; the Department of
Education also offers interested members of the public an opportunity to
subscribe to email updates about the panel's work.
Controversy is already swirling around the panel's work. Almost immediately
after the appointment of the panelists, critics objected that the panel was
weighted towards critics of the NCTM and its Principles and Standards for
School Mathematics. Also noted was the fact that only one K-12 teacher
is on the panel. The Association for Women in Mathematics objected to the
panel's vice-chair, Camilla Benbow, who is the author of three research
articles published in the 1980s in which she argued that there are
"intrinsic gender differences that favor males at the highest levels of
mathematics." Benbow told the press she stands by her results, but pointed
out that they represent only one small portion of a long research
career.
Most of the panelists have argued that these are over-reactions. Deborah
Ball was quoted arguing that the AWM's objections are misguided, saying that
"having people snipe at the panelists does not help things." Tom Loveless,
a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution who is also a member of the
panel, argued that in fact the panel represents "an opportunity to cut
through a lot of the noise surrounding math."
The NMP is expected to submit an interim report by January 31, 2007.