It’s been a busy few years for Jo Boaler, star professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Last year, the California Mathematics Framework — of which she is a primary author — ignited outrage due to its low-standards and equity-obsessed approach to math education (including axing calculus and describing homework as “inequitable”).
In April, she got into a Twitter spat with a professor at U.C. Berkeley who had criticized her framework. She even threatened to call the police on him! That same month, the Stanford Review published a piece exposing how Boaler — “Professor Karen,” as we called her — in addition to working full-time at Stanford and authoring California’s math framework, has been consulting with low-income schools… for $5,000 an hour.
In early May, things got worse when Stanford math professor Brian Conrad — an actual mathematician, unlike Boaler — published a scathing and detailed report on the framework. In that report, Conrad says of the framework’s obsession with data science: “Whatever author is responsible for such a myopic view of mathematics should never again be involved in the setting of public policy guidance on math education.” Ouch!
After our report, we were bombarded with tips from all over California about Boaler. It seems that her woke crusade against math has earned her more than a few enemies over the years, and those enemies are now sending dirt directly to the Stanford Review.
Let’s get into…
