Nixon Goes to Mathland

Gary Rubinstein:

Nowadays, with high stakes testing, we are told that the only two things that really matter, in equal amounts, are reading and math. Schools are praised or shut down for their scores (or ‘gains’) on these subjects. Some schools, particularly charters, have realized that if they focus on math, at the expense of reading, they can get better combined results than if they try to focus on both, equally. This implies that proficiency in math is somehow as important as proficiency in reading, and I’m here to say that this is completely absurd. I’m one of the few people who is not scared to say this since I will hold my own in a debate against anyone on this topic, as I’ve been pondering it, nearly daily, for about twenty years. In this post, I’ll try to summarize why I think this.