The 140 days of the 85th Texas Legislature draw to a close at the end of May. And as with teachers and students at the end of the school year, it’s crunch time. Lots of education bills were filed, many relating to mathematics education. Here are the three that I’m watching this week. There are many other important bills, some relating to education, out there. But these are the ones I think have the most potential to affect Texas mathematics education. I’ll update this blog entry as the session moves. Current time stamp is at the top, and I’ll make […]
The Fish Was THIS Big!
A Fish Story I’ve said this before, but mathematics occurs in the strangest of places. Walking down the street in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I was admiring the architecture. Lo and behold, suddenly there appeared a tile mosaic of a fish on the side of one building. I’m such a math nerd, so I couldn’t help but notice the square tiles and wonder, how many tiles did it take to make that fish? Or in math speak, “what is the area of the fish?” Then the teacher in me emerged. I’ve been on a kick lately with the “What do you […]
Math TEKS Implementation Update – Nov. 2015
The Texas State Board of Education’s Committee on Instruction met Thursday, November 19. One of their agenda items was an update on the implementation of the revised math TEKS. Hence, I was invited to testify about the mathematical process standards since that seemed to be the hot point in today’s hearing. There were a few parents testifying with concerns about how the mathematical process standards seem to be interfering with the math that they feel their kids should be learning. One father expressed frustration with his child having to learn multiple strategies to perform basic computations with whole numbers, rather than […]
