MrMathNerd

Math teacher, tinkerer, aspiring chef, runner, and proud dad.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

Did you know that prior to January, 2025, schools and churches were on a list of "sensitive areas" off-limits for immigration enforcement?

DHS changed the policy, which is why we see controversial actions today.

@NaazModan has been tracking the activities on school grounds:

[Jelani Nelson @minilek]

The letter+lawsuit that got the UC to drop the SAT.

"[Dropping the SAT/ACT] is not a discretionary policy decision; it is a legal obligation, and it is urgent. The use of these exams is an unlawful practice in violation of the [CA] Constitution's equal protection clause..."

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Two more studies show that when young people quit or reduce social media for as little as one week, their anxiety/depression drops.

One (with no control group) was written up in the NYT:
https://t.co/xyGj5Knv38

The other, much more rigorous, was conducted by Meta and then buried. But a description of it came out during the lawsuits. It was called "Project Mercury".

Read about it, and many other damning findings that Meta is hiding, here, from @JeffHorwitz:

https://t.co/F2YEYG4N5a

Here is the key passage:

In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.

Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company.

Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing.

“The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”

[Curriculum Insight Project @CurriculumIP]

Amen.

@AbbyTeachesDSM in our first guest post by a teacher:

[Tom Bennett OBE @tombennett71]

Get kids off smartphones for as long as possible.

[Larissa Phillips @larissaphillip]

When we started homeschooling when my son was 11, I finally showed him the much disparaged "parent way" of doing long division. All he'd know were these types of complex steps.
"That's so easy!" he said. He couldn't believe they hadn't taught the simplest and most direct way of solving the problem.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

The lighter side of academic declines, care of @TheOnion.

[Anna Stokke @rastokke]

📚 “Everything starts with the curriculum.” When goals aren’t clear, expectations get watered down & students pay the price. A knowledge-based curriculum (standards) with clear goals is key to meaningful education reforms. New episode with Nuno Crato is out now. 🔥 Link below.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

I see we’re having another round of debates about desk placement, because we like to yell at each other about things that are proxies for tribe, not proxies for learning.

Your daily reminder that awesome instruction can happen in schools with desks in groups or rows or what-have-you.

[Justin Baeder, PhD @eduleadership]

I will add that I think it’s legitimate to argue for whole books on their intrinsic merits, without needing research to prove that it’s a more effective way to get/teach kids to read.

In many ways, books are the point, and that needs no justification.

[Zach Groshell @MrZachG]

We confuse memorizing as a strategy with memorizing as an emergent outcome. Memory doesn’t care about your intent. If it’s retrievable, it’s memorized - whether by drills or decades of use.

Drills rock because they shortcut the slow grind of exposure.

[Anna Stokke @rastokke]

🎯Learning is a civil right. Kids deserve instruction that works. How to do it? Read about explicit instruction. Then do it.
🎥 Clip from my conversation with Anita Archer. Link to full episode and link to resource page with articles below. 👇

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

Many “adaptive” learning apps aren't really adaptive at all. They start everyone at the same level and then react to mistakes. That’s reactive, not adaptive. A real adaptive system begins with inference about the learner’s state.

Typical pattern I've noticed with vocab apps for example:
1. Every learner starts with the same set of words or grade band.
2. The app monitors right/wrong responses.
3. If a student gets several wrong, it repeats those words or drops to easier ones.
3. If they get several right, it unlocks harder lists.

This is just reactive difficulty adjustment, a form of after-the-fact remediation: the system waits for error signals before making changes. It infers nothing about what the learner knows beforehand.
With the emergence of LLMs, we can do a hell of a lot better than this.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

I agree with @johnarnold: both parties have broadly abandoned K-12 Ed.

Yet the Southern Surge offers a playbook for states.

I’m disappointed McMahon & Cardona both fail(ed) to take it national.

It’s not too late for a public pressure campaign, however.

In every state.

[Curriculum Insight Project @CurriculumIP]

Widen the aperture!

Please read @EvidentlyR's latest:

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

‘I said, “I’m a nonwhite student and I was in accelerated math, and I don’t see how making me wait a year to start algebra would’ve helped my classmates who were struggling with math.���

She didn’t really have an answer for that.’

So far, my favorite commentary on the piece.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

.@KelseyTuoc takes on detracking in Algebra… and lower-expectations-because-equity approaches generally.

I appreciate the distinction she makes between acceleration approaches (stretching below-grade level kids to advanced work) and the kind of lower-the-bar detracking we saw in SFUSD math (and its imitators).

[Mike Sullivan🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 @mikesully97]

@karenvaites that covers all the standards and CURATE will endorse it as HQIM.

The math curriculum my district uses, Carnegie, is God awful. Discovery/inquiry/constructivist - it’s all of them. The kids all hate it. The teachers all hate it. (Bear in mind it’s impossible to get teachers

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[Tom Bennett OBE @tombennett71]

‘If you don’t have a curriculum, your assessment framework becomes your curriculum.’ @ClareSealy quoting Tim
Oates #rEDCam25