Don't Believe People When They Say 'Research Says

So math education celebrity Jo Boaler has finally released a statement responding to some of the allegations that she engaged in research misconduct and specifically citation misrepresentation.

What that means for educators is that a lot of what we've been hearing over the past 10 years about what's good for students, what's equitable in math.

A lot of that is based on research that does not actually say what Bowler has been saying that it says.

And of course, so many people look up to Bowler, so many people have cited her work that it's just become generally accepted as true that all these things that she's been saying are supported by research.

But if you look at that research, and now lots of people are looking at that research that she's been citing, you will find that it does not actually say what she has been saying that it says, and specifically about fact fluency timed tests causing math anxiety, that turns out to not really be true, and about delaying algebra until high school, not allowing eighth graders who are ready to take algebra in middle school.

Her claims about those things have had a huge impact on practice in the profession, have affected millions and millions of students.

And those claims appear to be without merit, without any backing in the research that she's been citing, saying, hey, here is the research that supports what I'm saying.

People are reading those sources.

You can read them for yourself.

And I'll include some detailed articles.

One is by my friend Greg Ashman.

who's an Australian educator who has looked into this quite a bit.

And another is by Dr.

Brian Conrad, who is a fellow Stanford professor, but in the math department, not the School of Education, who has looked into all these claims, especially the ones that ended up in the California mathematics framework, and has really been critical of the way that they're impacting students and reducing opportunity.

Another issue is around data science.

Conrad has had a lot to say and Jelani Nelson has had a lot to say, a professor at Berkeley in computer science, has had a lot to say about these data science classes that are being pitched as alternatives to Algebra 2.

and as equivalent in terms of the preparation that they give students for higher level math work a lot of bowler's claims in all of those areas turn out to not really have anything behind them and it turns out that the claims that she's been making that there is research have really just been based on her reputation and now in the statement you can see she's expecting her reputation and her work she's expecting us to take her word for it that the research says what she's been saying all along so I think this is kind of a wake-up call for us I think this is revealing a vulnerability in our profession that if somebody is famous enough we take their word for what they say and like I hope people don't do that I'm not nearly as influential but I hope people don't do that with what I'm saying I hope that if I say something that that sounds true, that people will not just repeat it because it must be true because I said it.

I hope that people will look for themselves and look at the evidence and not just say, oh, I heard there's evidence, but actually read it.

And I spend a lot of my time, you know, even in areas that are not my area of expertise, like reading the research and trying to figure out if the claims that people are making are actually backed by that research because It's apparent now that lots of people feel comfortable, or at least a few people feel comfortable making claims about research that are not backed up by that research.

So I think all of this has been terrible for kids, but it's good that we're figuring it out.

It's good that people are investigating and figuring out what types of harm have been done in terms of policy so that we can start to undo that.

Let me know what you think.