Uri Treisman of the Dana Center at the University of Texas spoke about mathematics and equity at the annual NCTM meeting in Denver.
But he spoke about much more. He spoke about student performance on international tests; about the effect of poverty on achievement; about opportunity to learn; about the Common Core; about charter schools; about VAM.
Many who saw his speech said it was the best they had ever heard.
Please watch it. You will be glad you did.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is there a video that includes the graphs from the speech?
I find what Uri Treisman has to say is so true but as a math person I miss viewing the statistics on the graphs.
“He spoke about student performance on international tests; about the effect of poverty on achievement;”
It’s good to hear that many more are speaking out about the inanities that comprise the edudeformers agenda. However when we use the edudeformers framing we lose from the start, when we insist on using invalid and bogus “data” such as are the international test score results instead of attacking the standardization movement beast at the the heart which is the total invalidity of the process itself then we set ourselves up to “lose the language game.” When we talk of “student achievement” based on the invalid measures of standardized tests instead of the student and learning process which should be a very intimate,* personalized process in each class room between the teacher and the students and what it will take to enhance said process, we “lose the language game.”
When will those closest to the students, the teachers, administrators and parents take it upon themselves to quit playing this game of the Manx cat chasing its tail?
*close, near, warm, friendly, dear, bosom, cherished, familiar-standardized testing, cold and hearless, is just the opposite of what the teaching and process should be.
Uri Treisman speaks about the analyis Michael Marder did re: test scores and poverty. Here are the links to Michael Marder’s YouTube posts:
Diane’s link is to the mobile version, which didn’t work for me. Here’s a YouTube link:
and a link to the slides:
http://www.nctm.org/conferences/content.aspx?id=36436#equity
Thanks for the link to the slides, much better!
Good talk.
Where a student lives clearly has too large an impact on opportunity to learn. I might add that student age also has too large an impact on opportunity to learn, especially in mathamatics.
But should where student resides have that great an effect. If not then whey don’t we equitably fund all public schools to provide the staff, facilities and programs that the elite socio-economic public/community schools have? Why are these supposed philothranpic organizations supporting the apartheidization of our educational system? Hint: “Thar’s gold in them educational funding hills.”
This country has more than enough wealth to adequately fund a great public school for all. Too much wealth in the hands of too few creates these apartheid conditions. But, oh my, the avaricious bastards are trying to help aren’t they? Why look their organizations have given over $540M. Hot Damn!!
Billy the Goat’s wealth is over $67B. Let’s see $540M/$67B = 8% of his wealth-poor bastard would have to give up 8% if he alone funded this. Bill, go buy a few more islands, form your own country and leave this one alone.
We do spend over 610 billion dollars a year on education. Do you think a half a billion increase would level the playing field? Even if we took all of Bill Gates wealth it would only result in about a 10% increase in spending for a single year.
And the vast majority of that money is state and local monies, not federal.
I said nothing of taking “all of Bill Gates wealth” so that is a straw man argument.
But maybe if we would cut back on the War Department’s budget, bring the vast majority of the servicemen/women home and quit being the world’s policeman (enforcing unjust laws for the world’s corporations) we could free up, oh maybe a couple of hundred billion out of the $600B or so devoted to death and destruction to devote to providing a “world class” education for the poorest/lowest children of our society. Oh, I know that’s just way too “unrealistic”-I need to be a “realist”, eh!!
I thought that the discussion was excellent and very informative.
My one concern was on his discussion of the Common Core. My thought on this is: who will allow us to model it to fit? It was handed down as an edict that students were to be tested on! Since Educators where not asked in its formation why would one think that they will be allowed to “model it”? If Teacher are to use the Common Core then it should be thoroughly analyzed by Educators before attempting to define our teaching content! Once in place, if it doesn’t work either pedagogically or just logically it can set many students up for failure and can take years to effect any change!