**William McCallum**

**Public comment for the National Math Panel**

Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona

wmc@math.arizona.edu

I am a mathematics professor at the University of Arizona, and direct
the Institute for Mathematics and Education there. In addition, I chair
the Committee on Education of the American Mathematical Society and next
year will start a two year term as chair of the Conference Board of the
Mathematical Sciences.

I would like to start by thanking the Panel for its work in trying to
create clarity and consensus around the problems facing mathematics
education. The charge to the Panel covered an enormous, almost
unmanageable amount of territory. The Panel has researched and discussed
teacher knowledge, instructional practice, student learning, and the
core knowledge of school mathematics. It has navigated significant
controversies on these issues, and has discovered some areas of
consensus, and others where more knowledge and evidence is needed.
Effective next steps will require the energy of many
stakeholders---mathematicians, educators, teachers, administrators,
policy makers, and business people. My comments here today are about how
to awaken, harness and direct that energy.

The Panel's report will join a series of reports by distinguished
groups, from "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, through the Glenn commission
report that came out in the waning days of the previous administration,
to the recent National Academies report "Rising Above the Gathering
Storm." The Panel's recommendations could be quite different, but their
fate might be the same. Although there is some movement on turning RAGS
to riches for education, the general record of followup on these reports
is a sorry one. As the Panel winds up its work, it must be wondering how
to beat that record. Fran Lebowitz said that the opposite of talking
isn't listening, it's waiting to talk. Right now there are plenty of
people in the national education arena who are waiting to talk. Those of
us spread throughout the country who care about mathematics education
are obliged to start thinking now about how to turn the reception of the
Panel's report into a process of listening that leads to action, not
more talk. Too many reports have burst upon us like the summer monsoon,
only to sink into the desert sands. It's time to start making use of the
water when it comes.

The immediate purpose of the Panel's report is to inform the legislative
agenda at the federal level. However, we cannot wait. Whatever
legislation might materialize, turning the Panel's words into action
also requires an urgent national deliberation, conducted in school
districts, state houses, state boards of education, and national
organizations. On that front, I suggest that in your final report you
enjoin a coalition of institutes, centers, and programs to organize a
series of follow-up meetings around the nation. These meetings would
mine the work of the panel and extract nuggets around which to build
their own agendas for action and programs for research. An important
resource for this work will be not only the Panel's report, but the rich
set of documents it has accumulated during the period of public comment,
especially in areas where the Panel has been unable to develop
substantial agreement. Some meetings would have a focus on influencing
policy, taking recommendations from the Panel's report that can be
turned into immediate action. For example, there is much that
institutions for higher education can do right now in teacher
preparation and professional development, and an urgent need for them to
do it on a much larger scale than they do now. Other meetings would pick
up the ball in areas where more research is needed, and develop research
agendas of their own to fill in these gaps.

Should the panel take up my suggestion, the Institute for Mathematics
and Education
([http://ime.math.arizona.edu](http://ime.math.arizona.edu/)) would
eagerly step up. We have the capacity not only to run some of the
meetings envisioned in my proposal, but also to collate and orchestrate
the efforts of other centers. Collaboration is the hallmark of the
Institute. We specialize in bringing together communities that are
sometimes worlds apart: mathematics departments, colleges of education,
school systems, government agencies, business, and commercial and
non-profit education organizations. I have made preliminary contact with
some of the organizations that might help carry out this work, such as
the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, the Focus on
Mathematics Project at Boston University, the Center for Science,
Mathematics, and Computer Education at the University of Nebraska, the
Center for Mathematics Education at the University of Maryland, and the
Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering
and Technology here at Arizona State University. There are many more
centers that I have not had the time to contact, but which I am sure are
ready to join such an effort.

As "A Nation at Risk" memorably put it, "if an unfriendly foreign power
had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance
that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." That
was almost 25 years ago, and we are not much better off now than then.
We ourselves are the unfriendly power, and we are also therefore the
solution. I urge the Panel to draw on the resources of local and
national centers and catalyze the formation of a network for positive
climate change in education.