Barry's there, too!

Thisi just keeps getting better and better.

I say we all email Linda Seebach at Rocky Mountain News right now and tell her to come take a look at Kitchen Table Math!

seebach@RockyMountainNews.com

I'm going to do that now.


Here's Barry:

Oh, by the way. I've been advised that when we talk about math texts funded by NSF, we should be careful to say funded by NSF-EHR. That's the Education and Human Resources Division of NSF. NSF on the whole does good things, but EHR, on the whole, does not. Also, you can point out that the developers of such texts tout the NSF funding quite a bit, sometimes calling it NSF-endorsed (which it is not), or NSF-funded (almost correct; it's NSF-EHR funded).

Another caveat: People who say they are for "standards-based" math. If a candidate says that, before giving them a drop kick through the door, find out what standards they are talking about. More often than not, they mean the standards that National Council of Mathematics Teachers (NCTM) developed and which many states looked to when formulating their own standards. They were also the standards the NSF-EHR embraced when they started handing out money; they funded projects the embodied the standards and the dubious educational philosophy that informs it.

Another question to ask a candidate, if they say they support the NCTM standards. Does he/she believe that Saxon Math or Singapore Math texts meet the NCTM standards? If they say no, it might be amusing to hear why they think so before giving them that drop kick.