Monthly Archives: August 2023

What (The Heck) Am I Doing On The Citizen Stewart Podcast?

Posted on August 16, 2023 by garyrubinstein

Life is short. Over the past 11 years, since I entered the education reform debate on social media, I have had a lot of ‘debate opponents.’ The first was actually business tycoon Whitney Tilson, but others have come and gone, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

A New Low For TFA: Some trainees only get about 11 hours of student teaching.

Posted on August 15, 2023 by garyrubinstein

Teach For America’s teacher training has always been the weakest spot of an organization that has no shortage of weak spots. Ask any teacher what the most useful part of their training was and they will tell you that it … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

HISD Suffers With ‘New Education System’ Turnaround Plan

Posted on August 10, 2023 by garyrubinstein

With around 200,000 students, Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the 8th largest school district in the United States.  For years there was talk about the state possibly taking over the district and this finally happened on June 1, 2023.  … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Is Most School Math Useless? Part 5: What should the math curriculum be?

Posted on August 7, 2023 by garyrubinstein

If you’ve read parts 1 to 4 of this series, you may be confused. I the first part I said that not much of the school math is useful. In the second part I listed a few of those useful … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, math reform | 9 Comments

Is Most School Math Useless? Part 4: The usefulness of useless math

Posted on August 5, 2023 by garyrubinstein

Some of the most ancient math texts found on clay tablets from 1800 BCE in Mesopotamia are filled not with ledgers and bookkeeping but utterly ‘useless’ questions like “If you subtract the side length of a square from its area … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, math reform | 4 Comments

Is Most School Math Useless? Part 3: What are the most useless math topics?

Posted on August 4, 2023 by garyrubinstein

I’d estimate that about 15% to 20% of school time in K-12 is spent on math. Elementary and middle schools often have their students do 90 minutes of math a day. And it is common for students to take a … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, math reform | 12 Comments

Is Most School Math Useless? Part 2: What is the most ‘useful’ math?

Posted on August 3, 2023 by garyrubinstein

What if your house was burning down and you could only save one box of your things? What would you save? Fortunately most people will never have to make this decision but it is still an interesting exercise where you … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, math reform | 16 Comments

Is Most School Math Useless? Part 1: What does ‘useless’ mean?

Posted on August 2, 2023 by garyrubinstein

I’ve dedicated my life to teaching a subject I love and have loved since I was a small child. This country, and throughout the world really, a lot of resources are dedicated to teaching students math. From Kindergarten to 12th … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, math reform | 7 Comments