Effective Math Instruction: Hiding in Plain Sight

This article originally appeared in Education News in 2015. It received about 80 comments, most of them indignantly negative, which told me I was probably on the right track. I revised the article to bring it up to date and it is now included in my book “Math Education in the US: Still Crazy After All These Years”, which I heartily encourage you to purchase–in fact get several copies and send them to people who disagree with you on educational matters. They’ll never forget you.

I include this article here because there has been much talk lately on Twitter about how reading is not taught properly (due in large part to a great article written by Emily Hanford in the New York Times). The first line of my article echoes some concerns being discussed now. I extend the argument to math.

In a well-publicized paper that addressed why…