Obituary:

Richard Allen “Dick” Askey, of Madison, passed away on Oct. 9, 2019, at age 86. He was born to Philip E. Askey and Bessie May Askey on June 4, 1933, in St. Louis, Mo. Dick devoted his life’s work to mathematics and improving K-12 math education. He joined the University of Wisconsin Mathematics department in 1963 and retired in 2003. Dick was the world’s foremost authority on Special Functions. He traveled the world giving talks on mathematics and teaching the work of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the 1968/69 academic year, Dick worked in Amsterdam and brought his family. Dick helped many mathematicians around the world with their careers. He was a man of integrity and lived his life to help others and share knowledge.

My first meeting with Dick began with these words: “there are some things you should know”.

Notes and links on Dick Askey.

Wall Street Journal

So much for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s gutsy support for school choice. After backing a Senate proposal for school vouchers for K-12 students—one of his 2022 campaign promises—the Democratic Governor caved this week to his party and the unions and will nix the scholarships from the state budget.

G. S. Carr, M.A. (“The Textbook that Unleashed Ramanujan’s Genius”)

THE work, of which the part now issued is a first instalment, has been compiled from notes made at various periods of the last fourteen years, and chiefly during the engagements of teaching. Many of the abbroviated methods and mnemonic rules are in the form in which I originally wrote them for my pupils.

The general object of the compilation is, as the title indicates, to present within a moderate compass the fundamental theorems, formulae, and processes in the chief branches of pure and applied mathematics.

The work is intended, in the first place, to follow and supplement the rise of the ordinary text-books, and it is arranged with the view of assisting the student in the task of revision of book-work. To this end I have, in many cases, merely indicated the salient points of a demonstration, or merely referred to the theorems by which the proposition is proved. I am convinced that it is more beneficial to the student to recall demonstrations with Bach aids, than to read and re-read them. Let them be read once, but recalled often. The difference in the effect upon the mind between reading a mathematical demoustration, and originating one wholly or partly, is very great. It may be compared to the difference between the pleasure experienced, and interest aroused, when in the one case a traveller is passively conducted through the roads of a novel and uncxplored country, and in the other case he discovers the roads for himself with the assistance of a map.

In the second place, I venture to hope that the work, when completed, may prove useful to advanced students as an aide-meirwire and book of reference. The boundary of mathematical science forms, year by year, an ever widening circle, and the advantage of having at hand some condensed Btatement of results becomes more and more evident.

To the original investigator occupied with abstruse researches in some one of the many branches of mathematics, a work which gathers together synopticaUy the leading propoBitions in aU, may not therefore prove unacceptable. ALler hands than inine undoubtedly, might have undertaken the task of making such a digest ; but abler hands might also, perhaps, be more usefully employed,—and vith this reflection I have the less hesitation in commenciiig the work myself. The design which I have indicated is eomevhat comprehensive, and in relation to it the present essay may be regarded as tentative. The degree of success which it may meet witli, and the suggestions or criticisms which it may call forth, will doubtI”; i have theu- effect on the subsequent portions of the work. With respect to tlie abridgment of the demonstrations, I may remark, that while some diffuseness of explanation is not only allowable but very desirable in an initiatory treatise, concisencss is one of the chief requirements in a work intended for the purposes of revision and reference only. In order, however, not to sacrifice clearness to conciseness, mucli more labour has been expended upon this part of the subject-matter of the book than wiU at first sight be at all evident. The only palpable result being a compression of the text, the resiilt is so far a negative one. The amount of compression attamed is illustrated in the last section of the present part, in which more than the number of propositions usually given in treatises on Geometrical Conics are contained, together with the figures and demonstrations, m the space of twenty-four pages.

The foregoing remarks have a general application to the work as a whole. With the view, however, of makmg the earlier sections more acceptable to beginners, it •wiU be found that, in those sections, important principles have sometimes been more fully elucidated and more illustrated by examples, than the plan of the work would admit of in subsequent divisions.

A feature to which attention may be directed is the uniform system of reference adopted throughout aU the sections. With the object of facilitating such reference, the articles have been numbered progressively from the commencement in large Clarendon figures; the breaks which will occasionally be found in these numbers having been purposely made,in order to leave room for the insertion of additional matter, if it should be required in a future edition, -without disturbing the original numbers and references. With the same object, demonstrations and examples have been made subordinate to enimciations and formulse, the former beiug printed in small, the latter in bold type. By tlieso aids, tlic interdcpendt’nco of propositions is more readily sliown, and it Lccomes ca8y to trace the connuxion between thcorcms in different branches of mutliomatics, witliout the loss of time which would be incurred in turning to separate treatises on the subjects. The advantage thus gained will, however, become more apparent as the work proceeds. The Algebra section was priuted some years ago, and does not quite correspond with the succeeding ones in some of the particulars named above. Under the pressure of other occupations, this section moreover wag not properly revised before going to press. On that account the table of errata will be found to apply almost exclusively to errors in tliat section; but I trust that the list is exhiuistivo. Great pains have been taken to secure the acciiracy of the rest of tlie volume. Any intimation of errors w-111 bo gladly received.

I have now to ackiiowledgc some of the sources from which the present part has been compiled. In the Algebra, Theory of Equations, and Trigonomctry scctioiis, I am liirgely indebted to Todhuntcr’s well-known treatises, tlie accuracy aiiil completeness of wliich it would be suporfluous iu mo to dwull upon.

In the section entitled Elementary Geometry, I liave added to simpler propositioiis a selection of tlicorcms from Town. seiid’s ifodrru Geometry and Saliuon’s Conic Sections.

In Geometrical Couics, the liue of domonstration followrd ngrecs, in the main, with that adopted iu Drew’s treatise on tlio subject. I am inclined to think tliafc the method of tliat author cannot bo much improved. It is true thiiA soine iinportant properties of the ellipse, which arr arrived at…..

This, along with many other math posts is done in memory of Richard Askey.

Stephen Askey:

Once we were mighty. Once we were legion. Once we reigned over colleges and universities like demigods. Well, OK, we English majors were never that important, except maybe in our own eyes. According to a report in the New York Times, degrees awarded in English at American universities fell from seven point six percent of the total in 1971 to three point one percent of the total in 2011 — which goes to show, I suppose, that the golden age was never quite so golden. Still, better the periphery than where we are now — the periphery of the periphery.

One of the less-happy consequences of my decision to major in English 40 years ago is that I haven’t met many (or any) people who share my enthusiasm for the writings of John Dryden. Another is that I make about as much money as a janitor and live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I knew what I signed up for. My life sentence as an English major has taught me not to care overly much about what are laughingly called “the good things in life.” For better or worse, I can’t look at the glossy advertisements in The New Yorker without a feeling of cognitive dissonance. How could anyone who reads the poems and short stories and criticism in that magazine really want all that crap? If that’s a prejudice, the fault lies in me, not in my discipline, which includes plenty of practitioners with a somewhat more realistic financial outlook than my own. Anyway, for me, it’s less a discipline than a passion. I expect that that beleaguered three point one percent on campuses today feel much the same way. Against the advice of their parents, the social pressure of their peers, and the severely utilitarian direction of American society, they obdurately go on piling up their useless, unremunerative literary courses. See the trouble you get into when you listen to your soul?

American Academy of Arts & Sciences, via Richard Askey

Quora, via a kind Richard Askey email:

You are in Mordor now and way closer to Mount Doom.
There is suddenly so much less free time and everyone including the aunt of your neighbor kid’s cousin start to ask you how many years you have till “High School Entrance Exam”.

Now the main subjects are:
Chinese
Math
English
Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology)
Politics

Secondary subjects are:
Physics
Information Technology
Music
Art
Moral training (Apologize for my inability to properly translate.. You are generally taught how to behave, to love the Party, etc)

At the same time as an excellent student (score high is usually sufficient to earn that title), you will be taking National Math/Science Olympics Competition and spend loads of time on high school maths problems.

If unfortunately you don’t have a decent grade ensuring a good high school, you will have to spend much time on home tutorials apart from school.

I was of the second category, and spent 8 hours per week on Chinese, Math and Science, later English too.

Richard Askey, Ryota Matsuura, and Sarah Sword (PDF):

Given three numbers a, b, and c, we can find their mean (or average) as (a + b + c)/3. More precisely, this expression yields the
arithmetic mean of a, b, and c. A different kind of mean, however, uses the product of these numbers instead of their sum. It is called the geometric mean and is given by the expression (abc)1/3. We may interpret the geometric mean of nonnegative a, b, and c as the side length of a cube whose volume is the same as that of a right rectangular prism with dimensions a, b, and c.
In NCTM’s Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making in Algebra (2010), Graham, Cuoco, and Zimmermann use similar triangles and angles inscribed in circles to prove that, for two nonnegative numbers a and b, the arithmetic mean is greater than or equal to the geo- metric mean. Symbolically, this is written as (a + b)/2 ≥ (ab)1/2. This fact, called the inequality of arithmetic and geometric means (AGM), is actu- ally true for any number of nonnegative values. For three nonnegative numbers a, b, and c, for instance, we have (a + b + c)/3 ≥ (abc)1/3.

Scott Mahaskey:

The Navajo reservation that stretches across vast swaths of desert in northern Arizona and New Mexico is home to 66 schools run by the Bureau of Indian Education. The landscape might be breathtaking, but the dilapidated condition of the schools is eye-popping for another reason. Despite well-documented needs for renovations, the schools linger unattended for years. The buildings that often need the most attention is housing for teachers, who sometimes must commute hours to reach the remote campuses. This makes hiring qualified instructors more difficult and hinders efforts to improve abysmally low scores on reading and math tests.

Randall Munroe, via a kind Richard Askey email:

There once was a doctor with cool white hair. He was well known because he came up with some important ideas. He didn’t grow the cool hair until after he was done figuring that stuff out, but by the time everyone realized how good his ideas were, he had grown the hair, so that’s how everyone pictures him. He was so good at coming up with ideas that we use his name to mean “someone who’s good at thinking.”

Two of his biggest ideas were about how space and time work. This thing you’re reading right now explains those ideas using only the ten hundred words people use the most often.1 The doctor figured out the first idea while he was working in an office, and he figured out the second one ten years later, while he was working at a school. That second idea was a hundred years ago this year. (He also had a few other ideas that were just as important. People have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he was so good at thinking.)

The first idea is called the special idea, because it covers only a few special parts of space and time. The other one—the big idea—covers all the stuff that is left out by the special idea. The big idea is a lot harder to understand than the special one. People who are good at numbers can use the special idea to answer questions pretty easily, but you have to know a lot about numbers to do anything with the big idea. To understand the big idea—the hard one—it helps to understand the special idea first.

The Lincoln Project (PDF):

Measured in inflation-adjusted dollars per full-time equiv- alent (fte) student, states have been cutting this support for well over a decade, and spending cuts accelerated in response to the Great Recession. Between 2008 and 2013, states cut appropriation support per fte student in the median public research university by more than 26 percent (overall, support per fte student at the median public institution was cut by more than 20 percent).

The decline in support in part reflects difficult choices states have made in response to manda- tory spending programs like Medicaid, rising pension contributions, and a desire to preserve k–12 education.3
Today, public research universities still rely on state appropriations for approximately 51 percent of their educational revenue, although the percentage fluctuates widely by institution—ucla, for example, receives only 7 percent of its funding from the state. For most public institutions, further cuts could be devastating.

Via Richard Askey.

Wisconsin K-12 Spending Dominates Local Transfers and Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding
.

American Academy of Arts & Sciences (PDF), via a kind Richard Askey email:

The Academy is also working with the university community to identify steps that could be taken on campuses across America to advance the recommendations from Restoring the Foundation. Com- mittee member Venkatesh Narayanamurti (Harvard University) presented the report at the November 2014 annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities as part of a panel moderated by Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma and Vice Chair of the National Science Board. The Academy is now working with Dr. Droegemeier to orga- nize a conference in the summer of 2015 that will convene univer- sity research vice presidents and state officials from nsf epscor (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). The objective of the meeting is to foster new interinstitutional collab- orations that encourage the sharing of experience and the rapid adoption of innovative policies and practices.

The conversations taking place across the country will provide a venue for a system-wide assessment of progress on overcoming barriers to the discovery of new scientific knowledge and technol- ogies, the translation of these discoveries to business and industry, and the training of a future stem workforce that is commensurate with maintaining America’s position of scientific leadership in the world. Together, they will ensure that Restoring the Foundation–and similar reports from other organizations–do not fade from the col- lective consciousness, but continue to drive thoughtful discussions for years to come.

Robert D. Ballard video presentation.

Ronald E. LaPorte, via a kind Richard Askey email:

Dear Friends,

Ebola is frightening. Most information from TV, Facebook, and from our governments is poor. We want to change this by providing to you the best possible scientific information about Ebola from leading scientists from Nigeria, Africa, the Library of Alexandria and experts world wide.

We have created a cutting edge lecture on Ebola for you to teach your students, share with your faculty and distribute to your friends. The Lecture has been translated by 20 scientific experts into Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Malay, Pashtu, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. It present the best possible scientific knowledge about this disease.

http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec52511/index.htm

Ebola Virus Disease is a severe, highly infectious and often fatal illness that first appeared 40 years ago. The present outbreak is the most devastating compared the previous 33. It is producing enormous fear and rumors due to lack of good quality scientific information. The outbreak and fear have almost ‘crushed’ the affected countries economically, health care and science

The Ebola Outbreak causes havoc due to misinformation. We therefore brought together a team of leading scientists from Nigeria, Africa and internationally to provide the best possible scientific information and share this lecture with you and the world.

We provide this to you as a “gift that is meant to be given”. Please share this with your students and faculty, and post the lecture on Facebook, tell others about it through Twitter, etc. The Library of Alexandria Lecture is free, developed by the global scientific community.

Include links to this from Universities, Libraries, schools media, etc.

Let us continue to learn and share the scientific facts about Ebola.

Drs. Elegba, Kana, Bello-Manga and Adiri
Faculty of Medicine
Kaduna State University, Nigeria
Ismail Serageldin, Ph.D., Director Library of Alexandria
Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. Director Emeritus WHO Collaborating Centre, Pittsburgh

If you have questions contact Musa Kana musakana77@yahoo.com, or Ron
LaPorte,ronaldlaporte@gmail.com

And The Remarkable team of translators that can be found at the Lecture

October 2014

Sarah Blaskey and Phil Gasper:

MADISON, WIS., has a reputation as one of the most liberal cities in the country. It is also possibly the most racially unequal.
In early October, Race to Equity–a Madison-based initiative started by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families–released a report detailing racial disparities in Madison, and more broadly in Dane County, Wis. The findings are staggering.
The Race to Equity researchers expected the numbers compiled for racial disparities in Dane County to be similar or slightly better than the national averages. After all, Madison has long prided itself on having quality public education, good jobs, access to health care and human services programs, a relatively high standard of living and, in general, a progressive outlook on social, economic and political questions.
But while living standards for the white population in Dane County are higher than the national average, for the Black population, the opposite is true. On every indicator, with only two exceptions out of 40 measures, statistics collected in Dane County demonstrated equal or higher racial disparities between whites and Blacks than the national averages.

Related: The failed battle over the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school and our disastrous reading scores.

Gloria Romero:

We Californians like to think our state is the national leader in policy change and innovation, that new ideas are born here and other states follow our lead.
In one area, I am sad to say, that is not the case.
California is short-selling too many of its public school students because of education programs that inadequately prepare the next generation of teachers. A new review from the National Council on Teacher Quality that evaluates educational institutions, state by state, produced some sobering results for anyone who cares about what’s going on inside California schools of education.
Among the more disturbing findings from the institutions that provided data:

• Half of 72 programs for elementary school preparation failed the evaluation, a higher failure rate than programs in any other state.
• California’s secondary certification structure combined with inadequate coursework requirements, particularly in the sciences and social sciences, showed that only 17 percent of programs adequately prepared secondary teaching candidates in core subjects. That compared with 34 percent nationally.
• Coursework in a majority (63 percent) of California elementary programs did not mention a single strategy for teaching reading to English language learners.
• Of the 139 elementary and secondary programs that were evaluated on a four-star rating system, 33 programs earned no stars and only three earned as many as three. Not a single program earned four stars.

Related: Richard Askey: Examinations for Teachers Past and Present:

I have written about the problem in mathematics and hope that some others will use the resouces which exist to write about similar problems in other areas.
In his American Educational Research Association Presidential Address, which was published in Educational Researcher in 1986, Lee Shulman introduced the phrase “pedagogical content knowledge”. This is a mixture of content and knowing how to teach this content and is the one thing from his speech which has been picked up by the education community. However, there are a number of other points which he made which are important. Here is an early paragraph from this speech:

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

WGBH Nova, via a kind Richard Askey email:

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship’s cargo they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze. Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism. The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades. Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world’s first computer. An array of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a shoebox-size wooden case, was designed to predict the dates of lunar and solar eclipses, track the Moon’s subtle motions through the sky, and calculate the dates of significant events such as the Olympic Games.

Heather Brady:

The U.S. public education system is trying any number of techniques–from charter schools to presidential initiatives to oil-company-run teacher academies–to catch up to countries like Finland and South Korea in math and science education. But policymakers seem to be overlooking one simple solution: requiring math and science teachers to progress further up the educational ladder before they teach those subjects to kids.
The map above shows the minimum level of education each country requires teachers to obtain before working at the upper-secondary level. The map, based on data collected by Jody Heymann and the World Policy Analysis Center and subsequently published in Children’s Chances: How Countries Can Move from Surviving to Thriving, illustrates that the United States lags behind most other countries in its requirements.
Many U.S. school systems defer to teachers with higher degrees when they hire faculty, and teachers are required to have some kind of state certification along with a bachelor’s degree. However, the precise certification requirements vary, depending on how a teacher enters the profession and what state they teach in. The traditional route to becoming a teacher in the United States usually involves a bachelor’s or master’s degree in education along with a standardized test and other state-specific requirements. But most states have some form of an alternative route, usually involving a bachelor’s degree and completion of an alternate certification program while a person simultaneously teaches full-time. There is no federal mandate for teacher education requirements, according to the World Policy Analysis Center. The federal Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program rewards states with funds when they meet the “highly qualified teacher” requirement set forth in the No Child Left Behind Act.

Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
and,
Examinations for Teachers Past and Present by Dr. Richard Askey.

WU Yingkan, via a kind Richard Askey email (PDF):

xamination is a critical issue in education system in China. Zhongkao is a kind of graduation examination of junior high school, and at the same time, the entrance examination to senior high school. This paper describes the structure, features and changes in zhongkao mathematics in China based on a detailed analysis of 48 selected zhongkao mathematics papers from eight regions in recent six years. Examples of examination items are given to illustrate the identified features and changes. Zhongkao Mathematics, examination, features, changes, junior high school graduates
INTRODUCTION
China is the birthplace of examination system. The imperial examination was started in 597 during the Sui Dynasty, and was banned in 1905 during the Qing dynasty (Li & Dai, 2009; Zhang, 1996). It lasted for about 1300 years. With the influence of the long existence of the imperial examination system, examination is of great importance in China. It attracts attention from parents, educators, teachers, students, policy makers and so on. It is a big issue in education.
There are two significant examinations for students in school education in China, which are called “zhongkao” and “gaokao”. Figure 1 shows the school education system in China. Students start their nine-year compulsory education usually at six years old. Most of them stay at elementary school for six years, and junior high school for three years. In some districts like Shanghai, students stay at elementary schools for five years and junior high school for four years. At the end of Grade Nine, all students take zhongkao, which is summative assessment of the nine-year compulsory education, and more importantly, the entrance examination to senior high school. Nearly 90% of junior high school graduates continue their study. About half of them go to senior high schools, and the other half enter secondary vocational schools (Ministry of education of China, 2010a). The results of zhongkao decide whether students go to key senior high school, ordinary senior high school or vocational school. At the end of three-year senior high school study, students take gaokao, which is the entrance examination to universities. About 80% senior high school graduates are promoted to tertiary education (Ministry of education of China, 2010a). The results of gaokao decide whether senior high school graduates go to key university, ordinary university, college, or other high education institutes.

Rick Hess, via a kind reader’s email:

You didn’t think the ferment around Common Core could keep building? Hah! Prepare for several more years of increasing wackiness. In the middle of it all is Jazon Zimba, founding principal of Student Achievement Partners (SAP) and the man who is leading SAP after David Coleman went off to head up the College Board. SAP is a major player in Common Core implementation, especially with the aid of $18 million in support from the GE Foundation. Zimba was the lead writer on the Common Core mathematics standards. He earned his doctorate in mathematical physics from Berkeley, co-founded the Grow Network with Coleman, and previously taught physics and math at Bennington College. He’s a private dude who lives up in New England and has not been part of the Beltway policy conversation. I’d never met Zimba, until we had the chance to sit down last week.
Now, I think readers know that I’m of two minds when it comes to the Common Core. On the one hand, it does have the potential to bring coherence to the education space, shed light on who’s doing what, raise the bar for instructional materials and teacher prep, and so forth. On the other, there are about 5,000 ways the whole thing could go south or turn into a stifling bureaucratic monstrosity-and one rarely goes wrong when betting against our ability to do massive, complex edu-reforms well. Given all this, like many of you, I’m carefully watching how all this is playing out. In that spirit, I enjoyed meeting Zimba; found him smart and engaging; and thought you all might be equally interested in hearing from him. In particular, I’d love to hear how much Zimba’s responses do or don’t assuage various concerns about the Common Core. Here’s what he had to say (in an email interview that followed our conversation):
…..
RH: How confident are you that teacher preparation programs are ready and able to alter their practice in light of the Common Core?
JZ: There is a long tradition of mathematicians partnering with education schools and local districts to enhance the mathematical education of teachers. The first thing I ever read about this was Richard Askey’s 1999 article in American Educator. The National Math Panel also made recommendations to improve teacher preparation in mathematics. But the fact that mathematicians have been working on the mathematical preparation of teachers for so long is really a good-news/bad-news story. The Common Core could bring some much-needed scale and impetus for change here.
I’ve heard about some of the alternative certification programs basing their training on the Common Core, and that makes sense because these programs tend to have national reach. As for traditional universities, I assume change will happen faster in some places but slowly in most. I would love to see some creative thinking about this from the universities themselves, but also from the states and districts who are their clients.

Dr. Richard Askey, via a kind email (PDF):

TIMSS is an international set of tests on mathematics and science which is given every four years in grades 4 and 8 to a sample of students, and occasionally for a sample of students taking advanced mathematics and physics in their last year in high school. All of these will be given in 2015.
The following useful link gives access to the released TIMSS-2011 items and the scores different countries made on these items.
…………
One interesting fact is that among the 42 countries which tested 8th grade students, Finland had the highest percent of students who picked answer A and the third lowest percent correct, Chile had 11.7and Sweden had 14.4 percent. The Finnish result is likely a surprise to the people who have praised the Finnish school system for their results on another international test, PISA. However, one group which would not be surprised are university and technical college mathematics faculty in Finland. See an article signed by over 200 of them which is on the web at:
http://solmu.math.helsinki.fi/2005/erik/PisaEng.html

Dr. Alfred S. Posamentier (PDF), via a kind Richard Askey email:

We have come a long way since the 1960s, when a plane ride to Europe from the United States required a fueling stop in Gander, Newfoundland. Today we can reach airports in far-off Asia in a single flight. Combine this ease of travel with the technology-facilitated communication afforded us through e-mail and the Internet, and clearly the world has shrunk in the past few decades. Correspondingly, at all levels of education it is our responsibility to help our students appreciate their place as citizens of the world by giving them the most enriched view of the global environ- ment in which we study, work and live.

Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute via a kind Richard Askey email:

These modules are prepared by AMSI as part of The Improving Mathematics Education in Schools (TIMES) Project.
The modules are organised under the strand titles of the Australian Curriculum

• Number and Algebra
• Measurement and Geometry
• Statistics and Probability

The modules are written for teachers. Each module contains a discussion of a component of the mathematics curriculum from early primary up to the end of Year 10. There are exercises that teachers may wish to undertake – answers are given at the end of the module and often screencasts giving a solution are linked and indicated by an icon.

Zeit Online, via a kind Richard Askey email:

How do families live these days? OECD’s comprehensive world education ranking report, PISA 2009, was published in December of 2010. All participants of the test (fifteen-year-old pupils) completed a questionnaire about their living situation at home. ZEIT ONLINE analyzed and visualized this data to provide you with a unique way of comparing standards of living in different countries. Click on any icon to see further details.

Olli Martio – University of Helsinki, Marticulation Board in Finland
olli.martio@helsinki.fi, via a kind Richard Askey email:

Curricula changes in the Finnish school system have taken place in 8-10 year intervals. They have been recorded in the official curricula for schools by the Finnish Ministry of Education. However, these texts do not provide a complete picture since they are rather short of details. Schools can freely choose their textbooks and there is neither an official inspection nor an official approval for the textbooks. The system is based on the free market principle. Because of this textbooks, and the practice of teaching, should also be studied in order to understand the Finnish mathematics curriculum. A similar situation prevails in many other countries.
The leading ideas, from the point of view of people working in pedagogy, from 1960 on were “New Math” (1960-1970), “Back to Basics” (1968-80) and “Problem Solving”(1978- ), see [M1] and [PAL]. These trends have appeared in many other countries as well. However, these key words do not give a proper picture what really happened in the mathematics curriculum and education.
In Finland these trends had the following effects on the mathematics curriculum.

• Mathematics at school became descriptive – exact definitions and proofs were largely omitted.
• Geometry and trigonometry were neglected.
• Computations were performed by calculators and numbers and not on a more advanced level.

“Problem Solving” and putting emphasis on calculators have taken time from explaining the basic principles and ideas in mathematics. It should be also remembered that with the invention of calculators and computers the pressure to traditional mathematics teaching increased enormously since a general believe in 1960-70 was that all the mathematical problems can be solved by computers and hence the traditional school mathematics is useless. This criticism did not come from ordinary laymen only but from well known scientists as well and this attitude was very much adopted by people working in education and didactics. These ideas had a profound effect on the changes in the Finnish school curriculum.

Erin Loury, via a kind Richard Askey email:

Monkeys banging on typewriters might never reproduce the works of Shakespeare, but they may be closer to reading Hamlet than we thought. Scientists have trained baboons to distinguish English words from similar-looking nonsense words by recognizing common arrangements of letters. The findings indicate that visual word recognition, the most basic step of reading, can be learned without any knowledge of spoken language.
The study builds on the idea that when humans read, our brains first have to recognize individual letters, as well as their order. “We’re actually reading words much like we identify any kind of visual object, like we identify chairs and tables,” says study author Jonathan Grainger, a cognitive psychologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, and Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France. Our brains construct words from an assembly of letters like they recognize tables as a surface connected to four legs, Grainger says.
Much of the current reading research has stressed that readers first need to have familiarity with spoken language, so they can connect sounds (or hand signs for the hearing-impaired) with the letters they see. Grainger and his colleagues wanted to test whether it’s possible to learn the letter patterns of words without any idea of what they mean or how they sound–that is, whether a monkey could do it.

Nancy Kober and Alexandra Usher, via a kind Richard Askey email:

The 2012 Public Education Primer highlights important and sometimes little-known facts concerning the U.S. education system, how things have changed over time, and how they may change in the future. Together these facts provide a comprehensive picture of the nation’s public schools, including data about students, teachers, funding, achievement, management, and non-academic services.

John Witte & Barbara Wolfe, via a kind Richard Askey email:

There is considerable concern in Wisconsin and other states that accessibility to colleges and universities is becoming more elite; that due to rising costs of education and rising standards for admission universities are increasingly serving only those from higher income families. For example an article in the Christian Sciences Monitor in August of this year entitled “Too Few low income students?” stated that “about 50 percent of low-income students enroll in college right after high school, compared with 80 percent of high income students” and go on to state that the rate of high achieving low income students is about that of high income students that have far lower achievement scores1. William Bowen, Martin Kurzwell and Eugene Tobin note in their book that students in the bottom quartile of family income make up only 11 percent of elite college enrollment and receive no advantage from college admission programs; they call for an affirmative action program directed at low income applicants to promote equal opportunity and increase economic growth2. In this paper we use family income of University of Wisconsin- Madison applicants and those admitted over more than three decades to shed light on whether there has been a decline of opportunity to attend elite institutions among those with limited family incomes. As the premier public university in the state, this profile can serve more generally to provide insight on the issue of increasing elitism of premier public universities.
How accessible are the best public institutions to students from different socioeconomic groups? And, given the debates about financial aid that have been occurring at both the national and state, it is important to know: (a) How has access to the University of Wisconsin-Madison changed in terms of family income during the last three decades? (b) Are the patterns different for those within the state compared to those from outside the state? (c) Is there an income difference between those admitted and rejected for admission? And (d) What is the trend in the rate of applicants being admitted? This study addresses these questions.
Data on family income of applicants to specific colleges and universities are difficult to acquire. The most common sources are the income questions that students answer when completing ACT or SAT examinations. For a number of reasons these responses are probably woefully inaccurate. There is evidence from other studies that students simply do not have accurate information on family income. Universities could include income information on application forms, but most do not (including UW-Madison). Detailed income and asset data are included on the federal financial aid application form (FAFSA), but only students applying for financial aid complete those forms.

Toby Young:

A controversy broke out on Twitter earlier this week about an article in the Times Educational Supplement in which a teacher called Jonny Griffiths describes a conversation with a bright sixth-former who’s worried about his exam results. “Apart from you, Michael, who cares what you get in your A-levels?” he says. “What is better: to go to Cambridge with three As and hate it or go to Bangor with three Cs and love it?”
The controversy was not about whether the teacher was right to discourage his student to apply to Cambridge – no one thought that, obviously – but whether the article was genuine. Was Jonny Griffiths a real teacher or the fictional creation of a brilliant Tory satirist? Most people found it hard to believe that a teacher who didn’t want his pupils to do well could be in gainful employment.
Alas, Mr Griffiths is all too real. Since 2009, when I first mooted the idea of setting up a free school devoted to academic excellence, I’ve come across dozens of examples of the same attitude, all equally jaw-dropping.

We’ve certainly seen such initiatives locally. They include English 10, Connected Math and the ongoing use of Reading Recovery.
Perhaps Wisconsin’s Read to Lead initiative offers some hope with its proposal to tie teacher licensing to teacher content knowledge.
Related: Examinations for teachers, past and present.
There are certainly many parents who make sure that their children learn what is necessary through tutors, third parties, personal involement, camps, or online services. However, what about the children who don’t have such family resources and/or awareness?