The Study
In this book, Professor Suzanne Wilson tells the compelling and contentious history of the past two decades of efforts to reform mathematics education in California.

Findings
Wilson describes the early efforts to reform mathematics education in the sprawling state as fairly straightforward: A group of committed mathematics educators, inclined toward progressive educational views, aligned a set of state level curriculum policies to improve math education for all California youth. Indeed, she chronicles how under then-California Schools Superintendent Bill Honig, the state was able to produce a framework and aligned assessment system, a theory of professional development, and innovative curricula. “This was a reformer’s dream come true, surprising in any context, especially surprising in a state as diverse and large as California. But then things started to disintegrate,” Wilson wrote. In 1991, tensions arose between Honig and the California Board of Education and by 1992 criticism was coming from new reformers who advocated a more traditional approach to math teaching. At one point, the State Board sued Honig, which led to court decision that gave the board more power and directed the superintendent to implement board policy. In the end, the attacks by various statewide groups led the state to abandon the controversial and innovative testing system, California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). As she ends the story, Wilson notes that the debate continues to this day—in California as in other parts of the country. “So, we have an unstable discourse and a stable classroom experience, neither of which satisfies any reformer … in this story, no matter their perspective. Further, we depend on teachers …. Given the fact that a large-scale implementation of high-quality traditional or progressive mathematics education has never occurred, we know little about the relative educative merit of those paradigms. What we need, then, is to stabilize discourse—making it deliberative and sustained—while destabilizing practice, pushing it to be more mathematically rigorous and more accessible to more children.”

What It Means To You
Given California’s contentious history of mathematics education reform, are there lessons for Michigan? Is the mathematics in your district at once rigorous and accessible to all children?

For More Information
Wilson, S. (2003). California Dreaming: Reforming Mathematics Education. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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