History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Leading mathematician debunks ‘value-added’
- 05-09-2011
-
Guest blog by John Ewing/Washington Post
Mathematicians occasionally worry about the misuse of their subject. G. H. Hardy famously wrote about mathematics used for war in his autobiography, A Mathematician’s Apology (and solidified his reputation as a foe of applied mathematics in doing so). More recently, groups of mathematicians tried to organize a boycott of the Star Wars [missile defense] project on the grounds that it was an abuse of mathematics. And even more recently some fretted about the role of mathematics in the financial meltdown. But the most common misuse of mathematics is simpler, more pervasive, and (alas) more insidious: mathematics employed as a rhetorical weapon—an intellectual credential to convince the public that an idea or a process is “objective” and hence better than other competing ideas or processes. This is mathematical intimidation. It is especially persuasive because so many people are awed by mathematics and yet do not understand it—a dangerous combination. The latest instance of the phenomenon is valued-added modeling (VAM), used to interpret test data. (more...)
Send this
Print this
