THE FALL OF A MATH-DEI ‘EXPERT’
STANFORD math-ed prof Jo Boaler’s DEI racket may finally be coming to an end: On Wednesday, a 100-page complaint was filed against her, citing 52 instances of misrepresentation in her research citations.
Boaler, who hauls in a stunning $5,000 an hour for Zoom consultations, was a key figure in getting eighth-grade algebra banned from San Francisco’s schools in 2014. She’s an ideological propagandist rather than a research scholar, with her Stanford webpage declaring in its first sentence that her focus is on “how equity is promoted in mathematics classroom.” Her “research” gave diversity, equity and inclusion hucksters on the city school board the “research-based,” “research-informed” cover they needed to push the ban through.
Indeed, she’s one of the biggest influencers of math education, widely followed and quoted by DEI warriors: When they say “research shows,” they refer to her and her ilk. Yet the complaint slams her for “reckless disregard for accuracy.”
Charges of research fraud are lodged against other DEI hucksters (ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay, Harvard DEI Chief Officer Sherri Ann Carlson, Columbia University Medical Center DEI Chief Officer Alade McKen) who’ve all been accused primarily of plagiarism. But unlike them, Boaler did give credit to others’ research, but what she gave credit for was not what the credited research actually showed.
When Boaler cited author Randall Engel on “math anxiety” to attack algebra in middle school and calculus in high school, for instance, Engel called it a “huge misrepresentation” of his work.
Boaler seems like a veritable Sam Bankman-Fried of math education with fraudulent research and idealaundering.
Her “research” has helped her build a thriving math-ed-DEI business, called YouCubed, replete with materials, courses and consulting services (not that her six-figure salary as a tenured professor at Stanford is shabby to begin with).
The news of the complaint quickly drew tweets from prominent critics of DEI, including activist investor Bill Ackman, internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, entrepreneur Elon Musk, filmmaker Eli Steele and Peter Boghossian, who, along with James Lindsay, were early exposers of the DEI academic hoax. (Boghossian was pushed out from his university academic position for his stand.)
And while we hold our breath waiting for a response from Stanford, it’s worth surveying the damage. Remember, the harm is not just in the lying, the corruption, the unfair self-enrichment; Boaler’s schemes gravely hurt the kids of California and others around the country.
Again, she’s one of the biggest influencers of mathematics education, particularly when it comes to claims that race should somehow be a factor in it. Families in San Francisco fought hard in what became known as the “math wars” against this obviously stupid ban — how does denying everyone a chance to learn algebra help anyone?
But Boaler, backed up by extensive “research” from the illustrious Stanford University, enabled the school board to beat the families. It took 10 years to get the algebra ban lifted — including angry school board elections that threw out the wokest members, threats of litigation and legislation, alarming drops in standardized mathtest scores and an admission by the University of California that such dumbing down of students left students, well, dumbed down.
Meanwhile, an entire generation of San Francisco’s students was sacrificed to DEI. The harm is not limited to San Francisco. Banning algebra from middle school based on Boaler’s research became a national crusade, with a similar effort in New York City nearly succeeding.
Campaigns to ban calculus (presumably another source of racism somehow) from high schools also gained momentum.
Such dumbing down of math is exactly as prescribed by the California Mathematics Framework, a project mandated by California state law to regulate the teaching of math, of which Boaler is a key author.
Again, damage won’t be limited just to California, because what the largest state does in education, the nation follows. Whatever Stanford does with Boaler, the DEI fraud appears set to expand exponentially.
Legislation in California’s Democraticrun legislature (ACA-7) contains the provision to “fund research-based, or research informed, and culturally specific interventions or programs . . . [for] specific ethnic groups.” In other words, California taxpayers will be required by law to fund DEI research — like that of Boaler.
What could possibly go wrong there?