Idaho Association of Scholars

12/3/21 The College Fix : Truckee Meadows Community College has ended an effort to fire Professor Lars Jensen, who had been subjected to termination proceedings after pushing the school to maintain its rigorous math standards. In November, a hearing officer at the Nevada school  found that  Jensen had violated several of the college’s codes when he protested a new curriculum structure that essentially allows remedial math classes to count for college credit. In response to the hearing officer’s report, a five-member faculty termination board recommended on November 23 that Jensen be allowed to remain in his job. The next day, college President Karin Hilgersom accepted the recommendation of the faculty committee and announced Jensen would not be fired.  

 12/8/21 The Truth Fairy : The question I get most often—the thing that most interviewers want to know, even when they’re pretending to care about more high-minded things—is:   What’s it like to be so hated?   I can only assume that’s what some of you rubberneckers want to know as well:   What’s it like to be on a GLAAD black list? What’s it like to have top ACLU lawyers come out in favor of banning your book? What’s it like to have prestigious institutions disavow you as an alum? What’s it like to lose the favor of the fancy people who once claimed you as their own? So, perhaps I’ll begin by telling you a little bit about myself mainly because I’m not so different from many of you. I grew up, daughter of two Maryland State judges, in a multi-racial suburb in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I attended a community Jewish day school, which I loved. In high school, I worked as a stringer for the  Washington Jewish Week  and edited my school pa...

  This is signed by professors  who think math matters: We write to express our alarm over recent trends in K-12 mathematics education in the United States. All of us have first-hand experience of the role that clear mathematical thinking has played in advancing information technology and American economic competitiveness. We all also share the urgent concern that the benefits of a robust mathematical education, and the career opportunities it opens up, should be shared more widely between students of all backgrounds, regardless of race, gender, and economic status. We fully agree that mathematics education “should not be a gatekeeper but a launchpad.” However, we are deeply concerned about the unintended consequences of recent well-intentioned approaches to reform mathematics education, particularly the California Mathematics Framework (CMF). Such frameworks aim to reduce achievement gaps by limiting the availability of advanced mathematical courses to middle schoolers and be...