Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as

78 Teaching Minds Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation.' The natural assumption here is that we must hurry up and teach more Algebra II, of course. Except that obviously is not what is going on; it just serves the interests of those who wrote the report to put it that way. Here is another statement from that report: Students who depended on their native intelligence learned less than those who believed that success depended on how hard they worked. The claim is simply this: If you work harder, you get into college. Now the question is: Why are the writers of this report claiming that the thing that students have to work harder at is Algebra II? It is easy enough to see why this panel decided that. At stake was a $100 million federal budget request for Math Now, and the people who were on the panel were people who would receive that funding. Uni- versity professors issue reports asking for grant money to be approved that state that the nation will not succeed without that grant money. Vested interests are nothing new. I am sometimes amazed that no one points this stuff out, however. It is well established that everyone must know algebra. The fact that this is well established by those who make money on the teaching of algebra is never brought up by the New York Times, which published a lead article on the report, or by anyone else, it seems. My favorite part of the Times article was the following: Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel “buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts.” Dr. Faulkner, let me point out, is a chemist, and I am pretty sure he doesn’t really know much about cognitive science. But cognitive science has been used of late to justify a great deal of what is wrong in education. E.D. Hirsch, an English professor at the University of Virginia, made a career of making lists of stuff every kid should know. When cognitive scientists trashed this work as nonsense, he cited the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023824