"Fluency practice does not mean incessant drilling; interventions are only 5-10 mins/day. Think of practicing scales for learning a musical instrument, dribbling drills for basketball, or footwork drills for soccer" Great article @DavidMarguliesM & @RahimNathwani edsource.org/2026/math-fact-…

📢 Dr. Ben Solomon & I are giving a Webinar on behalf of the Evidence Advocacy Center on May 8! The Science of Math Instruction: Using Evidence-Based Practices in the Classroom. Register below. 👇 home.edweb.net/webinar/maths…

📢 California parent, David Margulies, gave a phenomenal presentation to his local school district, highlighting the importance of math fact fluency! He even references research from my podcast with @brian_poncy. This is exactly why I do the podcast!🎯 youtu.be/frmXGHMH3xY?si=cOlB…

Here we go again—NCTM pushing false claims about math anxiety and timed tests. How to actually combat math anxiety? Teach math well. People feel anxious about things they struggle with. Build strong math skills to build confident math students. edweek.org/teaching-learning…

I've read your post about BTC and this is meant to be a respectful note about it, since you did invite my feedback. I can see you spent a lot of time on the post. As I already mentioned, there are no studies showing that BTC is effective. Liljedahl himself has admitted that he has only measured engagement (and how that was measured is even questionable), despite constantly promoting it as research based. It's surprising to see all these references to @P_A_Kirschner in your post. I have Liljedahl's book and there isn't a single reference to Kirschner, Sweller, Rosenshine, etc. If he intended for his program to be in line with CLT, wouldn't he have referenced these researchers himself? You've picked 3 things to focus on in the post. I've never seen anyone criticize two of those things. I don't think anyone has a problem with students making notes for themselves. Certainly thin slicing is a form of scaffolding and is, indeed, in line with cog. load theory. But scaffolding problems is likely to have little benefit if you haven't modelled how to do the problems in the first place. It was surprising to me to see thin slicing and student notes highlighted since neither is something that's stood out about BTC, nor have I ever heard any complaints about those two things. The group work part of your post neglects to address some of the concerns many raise about BTC. Extraneous load caused by noise/chaos, social loafing, weak students/ESL students/less outgoing students being left out of the group, outgoing/confident/students with more prior knowledge taking over the group, bullying, students teaching classmates incorrectly, students not getting enough independent practice w/ feedback, etc. Group work has its place, but the criticism of BTC is that it's front and centre and overemphasized. But the biggest criticism of BTC is that there isn't enough direct instruction. Liljedahl himself disparages it as "mimicking". He has all sorts of bizarre ideas like "mimicking isn't thinking" or if you're sitting you're not thinking (which is not only wrong, but ableist) and an absurd obsession with non-permanent vertical surfaces. If you are taking CLT into consideration, how can you avoid talking about direct instruction, modelling, the worked example effect (which involves mimicking), which are critical components of that? Mimicking is actually an essential part of learning, particularly at the acquisition stage. He is not doing students or teachers any favours by disparaging mimicking. I have other criticisms of BTC that people don't often bring up. For example, I don't think writing everything on non-permanent surfaces is a good idea. Students should have a record of the work so that they can go back and look at previous solutions. Improper mathematical writing should also be corrected. At one point, I read one of his papers and was appalled to see (among other things) a measure of effectiveness having to do with the work being non-linear and scattered. We have to do so much correcting at the post-secondary level due to students not having been taught how to write math properly (e.g. solving an equation and writing arrows instead of equals signs and a huge mess all over the page) and then I read that teachers are being advised that scattered math is an indicator of learning? Finally, I'll say what I usually say about BTC. There is nothing new here. It's bizarre to me that school districts are paying someone to come in and explain to teachers how to assign groups and insist that students work on vertical non-permanent surfaces. It seems like a big scam to me. @JimHewittOISE

More on the California Math Framework: a formal complaint was filed with Stanford against Brian Conrad! Of course, Conrad thoroughly destroys their arguments here: sites.google.com/view/public… Curiously, almost identical wording to that in the complaint appears in a Medium post that was published a couple of weeks ago, which was apparently signed by 9 people. The complaint filed with Stanford is signed by 1 author. Who really wrote it? And why did the other 8 not sign? From Brian's commentary "Whomever carried out the analysis of the 11 citation misrepresentation examples in the complaint has such a poor grasp of details and low level of scholarship that they should never again be involved in setting public policy for education." Wise choice not to sign. A few more quotes from his take-down. Indeed, "public education policy should be transparent and as citizens we can check things for ourselves" and "as an academic with content expertise in math, it is responsible citizenship for me [Brian] to point out errors in public policy drafts related to math where I see them." "Parents and college faculty around the country have contacted and thanked me [Brian] for sharing information based on my experience and expertise.  I [Brian] will continue to do so, as a recognized source of reliable guidance on readiness for quantitative college degrees and career paths." Sorry, not going away that easily. And, I want to echo that the suggestion that he can't understand education research and lacks a sufficient understanding of K-12 math education to be involved in a discussion about it is preposterous. I mean, come on. Talk about grasping at straws!