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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to serve as a discussant after a group of panelists, all teachers in the "spring" of their careers (even one first year teacher), spoke on transforming classrooms and schools. The panel discussion was part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education's symposium called "Education for a New Era." This particular session was entitled "Teaching Along the Edge," and the moderator, Dr. Jocelyn Glazier (a former high school English teacher and current associate professor at UNC), shared that she wanted "to find the places where there is light" in education. She shared that "education is a practice of freedom," and she hoped the panelists would look at current inequities and move students "beyond basic skills."

It's a pretty exciting time to work in my current school district. About twenty years ago, the elementary school implemented a standards-based report card. Over the past several years, we've seen a grassroots movement in the area of assessment and grading reform in our secondary buildings. Dozens of teachers and building leadership teams have visited and/or inquired about what's going on in our high school and middle school, which is one of the reasons we'll soon be co-hosting a standards-based grading conference in eastern Iowa (before you ask, we've reached our registration capacity and the waiting list has been closed as well).

"For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy. Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version."

The president is wrong. Arne Duncan is wrong. The media are wrong. Many state administrators are wrong: This was the message on the current state of school reform in a Feb. 18 keynote session at the American Association of School Administrators [2]' National Conference on Education.

If my seatmate on an airplane asks me what I do for a living, I tell the truth: I'm a mathematician. This generally triggers one of two responses. Either I'm told that I must be brilliant . . . or I hear about the person's inability to balance a checkbook. The truth is, I'm not brilliant, just persistent, and I hate balancing my checkbook. Both responses, however, point to a fundamental misunderstanding about what mathematics is supposed to do and its current - and unfortunate - trajectory in American education.