We are one week out from the Grading Conference (@thegradingconference.com)! Check out all of the happenings on Day 1 of the conference in this blog from @empittsdonahoe.bsky.social.

I absolutely 100% would not have become a teacher -- wouldn't have felt comfortable at the front of a room, wouldn't have even considered pursuing a career in education -- without experience performing improv in high school and college. Getting on stage genuinely changed my life.

Back in the Clover: Vegetarian chains says it's coming back from the dead www.universalhub.com/2026/back-cl... #Boston #CambridgeMA

If you agree that grades "should reflect whether students meet the learning objectives of the course, not how they perform compared to their peers", maybe you'd like to join us at the Grading Conference in a few weeks to learn about different ways to do exactly that. thegradingconference.com

Say it ain't so! Clover has been a wonderful local chain for vegetarians in Boston

No matter how much you want to, you can’t just redefine how percentages are calculated. It just doesn’t add up. open.substack.com/pub/kityates...

These "odd couple" columns are usually asinine, but this one had an unexpectedly relatable passage in the middle: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu... "I used to think I had the best job in the world. And now, well, I don’t know how to do the thing I used to feel (somewhat) competent at."

**Implementing Alternative Grading** The Center for Grading Reform and the RIOS Institute are hosting a six-week Learning Community on alternative grading. Participants will apply a structured approach in a course. Prior familiarity and a target course required. Starts May 5: bit.ly/48J4sMF

Absolutely heartbreaking. So many mathematicians I know studied there, men AND women. Maryam Mirzakhani studied there. If this isn't enough to cancel/relocate from the US the International Congress of Mathematicians #ICM2026, nothing will be.

There are not "math people" and "not math people." School math represents a sliver of mathematics as a discipline, and there is a lot more in there that the so called "not math people" could really dig and be good at.

Mathematics lives inside our biggest social questions. Data, percentages, and models can inform—or divide—depending on how we see them. What might it mean to develop a shared mathematical lens that helps us reason, question, and find common ground? #MathEquity #iTeachMath #EduSky #Blusky

More than 1,500 mathematicians are demanding that their field’s most prestigious meeting be moved from the U.S.

"Leibniz wanted a much more algebraic, symbolic, notation-focused calculus [...]: 'I dare say that this is the last effort of the human mind, and when this project shall have been carried out, all that men will have to do will be to be happy.' I mean, he sounds like an AI hype guy or something."

Strong recommendation to teaching faculty to just say no to this stuff, even if you are AI curious/enthusiastic. This is meant to reduce faculty autonomy and capture human labor with automation. You're selling out your future self and the profession as a whole. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

"We need to think about cognitive fitness the way we think about physical fitness. There should be a simple rule for being a thinker in an age of AI: Don’t let AI write anything for you. Writing is to cognitive health what steps are to physical health." www.chronicle.com/article/is-a...

I'm at this webinar right now about #RCV and Santa Claus just entered the chat !?!?

Great point about product vs. process in this book review on AI in education: "Learning requires critical engagement with productive failure," but "learners often mistake our intentions because education systems and our culture put so much emphasis on grades" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My "Math, Revealed" series is freely available to anyone -- no paywall! -- in the thread below.

Whenever someone reports a percentage but not an absolute number, ask yourself why; whenever someone reports an absolute number but not a percentage, ask yourself why

"Next semester, do less that means more" Thinking about what this might mean for a calculus course. What can we do less of to make space for more meaningful learning experiences?

My 7-year-old has made up something she calls an "equation joke": Q: Why was 3 afraid of 5? A: Because 5 8 13! #TMWYK

My new #math series in the New York Times, "Math Revealed," is aimed at everyone, whether you love math or not. Have a look! You can read it here for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Today's example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines comes to us via the Boston Globe: Trump says Harvard is teaching ‘remedial mathematics.’ Is there any truth to that? www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/08/n... Explanation of Betteridge's Law: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...

We lament that students are disengaged from the important parts of learning and yet here are professors modeling the same kind of disengagement. Where does this end? I'm very sympathetic to the problems of too many students, not enough time. Those were the circumstances for my entire career.

...allowing an LLM to make your presentation from your notes is to actively avoid what is, in reality, part of the creation of that presentation. I've been doing a couple of these things a week since January and I can tell you that making the slides always always always results in changes.

2. But the more pernicious risk may be what I call "self-alienation" that is you gradually remove yourself from the experience of your job until you've entirely lost touch with what is and meaningful about this work. Processing student writing with an LLM is not the same thing as reading it...

1. Faculty who use LLMs for core aspects of their labor are inviting their own replacement. This is obvious and a cycle that will mirror what happened with adjunctification. You are showing you are unnecessary. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog...

We are right at one month away from the 2025 Grading Conference (June 11--13), and have just posted the schedule. Check out all the amazing presentations we will have this year! www.centerforgradingreform.org/grading-conf...

The new pope has a BS in mathematics from Villanova, which explains how he was so successful at becoming the largest cardinal.

If we do not find an alternative source of funding, this means that the US will not be represented in ongoing conversations with the global community about issues in mathematics education. The isolationism is not just political, it is also intellectual and will have consequences for decades.

I am the current chair of the US National Commission for Mathematics Instruction. Our commission represents the US in an international community of mathematics education under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. Our very modest NSF funding has not been renewed. #iteachmath

"In a data-driven society, numeracy is essential for making decisions evaluating information and holding leaders accountable. Civil rights leader Bob Moses rightfully called math literacy the civil rights issue of the 21st century."

I would actually prefer it if my discipline wasn't used as a proxy for intelligence / academic worth in the culture wars.

Fun fact I just learned: Google Sheets does precedence wrong. It interprets "=-A2^2" as (-A2)^2 rather than -(A2^2).

Great suggestions here for math instructors at all levels: 1. Meet students where they are 2. Show students that instructors authentically care about their learning 3. Provide "interesting, challenging and joyful work to all students"

Today is Bandcamp Friday.

And what better place to talk about alternative grading than at the Grading Conference, June 11--13? 😄

"We are so familiar with the concept of linearity that we impose our linear frame of reference on data we observe in the real world." This makes me wonder whether the abundance of proportional reasoning problems in early school math conditions us to see everything as linear.

"A lover of puzzles and crosswords while growing up in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression, Mrs. Parsons deciphered German military messages that had been created by an Enigma machine."

Meet Padi Fuster Aguilera, a scientist who refuses to stay silent A Catalan mathematician, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado-Boulder and outspoken advocate for social justice, Padi Fuster Aguilera stands at the intersection of science, education and activism.

🧮 Join us for Math Playground – a day of hands-on math fun for all ages! Sat, May 3 | 10AM–1PM Cambridge Street Upper School, 850 Cambridge St. Games, activities, and a special screening of Counted Out. 🔗 Register: camb.ma/4iGNRLW #CambridgeMA #MathPlayground #STEAM

According to @fairvote.bsky.social's analysis, Massachusetts ranks very low (#40) in voter turnout and dead last (#50) in closeness of elections because our average margin of victory is 66% points (!)

Do you have something to say about alternative grading? We're looking for guest posters on Grading for Growth!

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday.

Quote from that New Yorker piece: "You can no longer *make* students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire."

Highly recommend this piece by D. Graham Burnett that really grapples with the fact that LLMs can produce an incredibly convincing simulation of human thought, but also why we can't treat the simulation as the same was what happens when humans think. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Letter to the editor in today's NY Times advocates for gradeless education! She even links to relevant articles and research, including posts by @jessifer.bsky.social and @alfiekohn.bsky.social #edusky #ungrading www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/o...

"This is all to say that it’s easy to get caught by a number wielded like a club. Whenever you hear someone make a point by tossing around a big number, you should run it through your own filter of what makes sense." Great real-world example here for a quantitative literacy class! #iteachmath

"There’s no analogous national conversation about the experience of higher-ed employees in the second Trump era. We have the same stress, uncertainty, fear, and harm that affected higher-ed workers during the peak of the pandemic but without the same level of institutional recognition or action."

Exclusive: The director of the National Science Foundation announced his resignation today, 16 months before his 6-year term ends, in a letter to staff obtained by Science. scim.ag/42vc3fn