The Impact of Policy Decisions on Sustainability Efforts of Mathematics Education Reform

In this presentation from the Second Virtual Conference on Sustainability of Systemic Change, Carol Fry Bohlin discusses the shift in power that has taken place in California. "The challenges that the mathematics reform community has faced recently in California and will be facing nationally for at least the next several years promise to be considerable. When state or national policies increasingly take the decision making power out of the hands of teachers (and educators) and place then in the hands of a relatively small group of policy makers, feelings of disempowerment, disenfranchisement, and ultimately disillusionment among many of the most talented teachers and mathematics educators are often the unintended and unfortunate results. A key challenge is to be vigilant in the search for strategies to support and empower teachers to continue doing what they know is best for students and to provide paths that they may continue to grow in this knowledge."

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