As math scores plummet, teachers group goes more woke

OPINION:

People keep saying “woke is dead.” Perhaps that is true in some places, but it’s alive and well inside the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

According to its website, this professional association of math teachers advocates for high-quality mathematics teaching and learning for every student. Sounds good to me. It goes on: “As a mathematics educator or researcher, your passion is ensuring that all students receive the highest quality math education possible. Membership in NCTM means access to the resources you need to turn your passion into measurable student learning outcomes.” This all sounds promising, and I suspect most parents would give it a quick thumbs-up and never think of it again.

Not so fast, guys.

From Oct. 15-18, math teachers and vendors will convene in Atlanta for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Annual Meeting & Exposition, which, according to the website, is “considered the premier mathematics education event of the year.” By whom? That’s unclear. The website says this year’s meeting will “honor the historical and contemporary contributions of mathematics educators to classrooms and communities” and “celebrate and elevate the creative teaching practices that have transformed math learning for each and every student.”

A quick scan of the agenda for this “premier mathematics event,” although funny in its absurdity, reveals that the organization is still, at least in part, in the throes of ideological capture. Let’s take a look at some of the sessions:

• “Interactive Workshop: Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies: Implications for Teaching from a Curricular Analysis.” This session offers attendees a “pedagogical reflection tool that was developed through an equity audit of an NCTM-aligned secondary mathematics curriculum” that uses Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies (BlackFMP) to “audit the curriculum.”

• “Reflecting on My Whiteness: Unpacking the Barriers Towards Transformative Mathematics Teaching.” This session offers “strategies to confront the oppressive forces of whiteness and take practical steps to dismantle inequitable practices.”

• “Iron Sharpens Iron: Black Womxn in Mathematics Education Speak.” This session will focus on how “Black Womxn in Mathematics Education disrupts systems of oppression by challenging marginality and privilege within mathematical spaces, nurturing Black Womxn’s mathematical agency, and engendering a sense of belonging coupled with Black Girl Joy.”

• “The Impact of Identity: Rethinking Agency, Standards and Assessment in Elementary Mathematics.” “In this workshop, participants will learn about actionable strategies that elementary teachers and leaders can use to go beyond equity as an ultimate goal. We will explicitly discuss ways to dismantle academic apartheid in K-12 math education by rethinking the roles math identity, agency, assessment, and standards play in the teaching and learning of mathematics.”

• “Envisioning Antiracist Spaces for Mathematics Teaching and Leadership.” “Participants will engage in Marian’s journey in implementing antiracist math practices” and “discuss what antiracist leadership really means.”

This seems more like a graduate seminar from hell than the premier mathematics event of the year for K-12 educators. Although not every offering resembles these, their mere presence on the agenda is a problem that too many people wrongly believe has been stamped out.

People often respond skeptically when they hear that even math classes have been politicized and infected with ideology. “It’s math,” they say, as if numbers and objectivity make it immune from ideological capture. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ conference agenda provides a helpful snapshot of evidence that the claims remain true.

Even as the broader culture begins to push back on the excesses of diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory, and activist-driven education, the country’s largest math teacher organization isn’t pumping the brakes.

The news here is not that math conferences lost the plot and went woke; we already knew that. We didn’t know that, in the face of the steepest decline in math scores ever recorded, they doubled down.

• Erika Sanzi is director of outreach for Defending Education.