Education Week - October 12, 2016 - 23

Building more robust,
successful systems
of education is the
most pressing challenge
of our time."

PAUL REVILLE is a professor of practice of policy
and administration at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education, where he founded and leads the
Education Redesign Lab. He is a former secretary
of education for Massachusetts.

Getty

dearth of leadership is not only a lost
opportunity in the presidential campaign, but
also a threat to our education system's future.
Those leaders who are involved in education
reform today often pursue strategies that
bypass the existing system with the belief that
the only viable pathway to change is through
starting over completely. While charters and
outside-in organizations have generated some
successful results, it is unlikely that the United
States is going to abandon its current education
system. And, it appears that for the foreseeable
future, the overwhelming majority of U.S.
students will learn in that system. Because of
this, improvements must start from within.
Building more robust, successful systems
of education is the most pressing challenge
of our time. Transforming education will
require input from government officials,
particularly governors and mayors; persuasive
economic arguments from corporate CEOs;
and collaborative efforts from state, district,
and school leaders. These leaders should see
opposition to existing reforms as an opportunity
to conceive, promote, and implement a new
vision for public education. They should take

By John Urschel

value of student-generated solutions.
But the best way to start integrating youth activism
into classrooms is the simplest: an honest conversation
about what students experience as unfair in school or
society and open conversations about possible solutions.
Above all, our job as educators is to help our students
see and remove obstacles to their freedom. We must
encourage them to play an active role in shaping their
education and their future. ■
LYN MIKEL BROWN is a professor of education and women's,
gender, and sexuality studies at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine.
She is the author of Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting
Youth Activists (Beacon Press, 2016).

Participating in
girl-led activism
helps to create a
school climate where
gender diversity is
visible and valued."

hen I was a kid,
I hated math. I
thought it was
boring and a waste
of time. I hated
memorizing rules that didn't seem to
connect to anything in real life, and I
couldn't stand doing hundreds of exercises. The feeling was mutual; my
math teachers were not particularly
fond of me.
At home, my mother and I would
spend hours doing puzzles and competing to see who could solve them
first. If I won, I would get a dollar toward my allowance. I loved puzzles,
not just because they were how I
made my money, but because they
were fun and challenging. I could feel
myself improving. Very quickly, my
mother had to change the rules of the
game because I was becoming quite
the little tycoon!
I had no idea that what I was doing
with my mother was actually math.
It wasn't until I got to college that I
realized that mathematics is not just
memorizing formulas in a classroom,
but is actually more closely related to
what I was doing with my mom as a
kid. Math gives us the tools to solve
the world's puzzles.
As a doctoral student in mathematics at MIT, I feel the same rush and
joy when I'm working on a hard proof
or problem as I did back in my mother's kitchen as a kid. It doesn't even
feel like work. As with football (a
sport I play professionally), it fires my
competitive instincts-only in math,
the competition comes from math
problems that many have tried to
solve and failed. Unlike a game, there
is nothing unnecessary about it. The
work I'm doing relates to everything
from artificial intelligence to dealing
with massive amounts of data.
One of the most challenging things
we face is getting students excited
about math and science. Building a
strong foundation in math and science is critical to help set students
up for success in the classroom, in
college, and beyond. Math education isn't just about solving problems
in the classroom; it's an exercise in
training to help students solve the
problems they will face in life.
To show kids that math is rooted in
real life-and that it can be fun-I've
recently partnered with the technology company Texas Instruments to
explore the "STEM behind sports" in
a new program. The program consists
of a series of activities that allow students to explore the science, technology, engineering, and math behind
some of their favorite sports. In one
activity about football, students must
use math and science to investigate
the path of a field-goal kick in order
to win the game.
I want students to see that math
extends far past the confines of the
classroom and into everyday life. I
also want them to appreciate that

Getty

The Winning Equation in
Math Education

what's best from successful schools of all
kinds-and from other countries' education
systems-to formulate that vision and drive
implementation with the same vigor and
determination that characterized past reform
leaders' efforts.
This new vision will also need to move
beyond the key strategies of the recent era,
finally abandoning the 20th-century factory
model of education, to envision a system
built for 21st-century realities. Education
must to take into account the whole lives
of children from birth through some level
of their postsecondary education, with
more customization, personalization, and
differentiation-trends that are also catching
fire in the private sector. Leaders need to focus
on creating the full range of personalized
supports and opportunities necessary for all
children to achieve the levels of success now
typically reserved only for the affluent few.
This requires leveling the playing field, with
equal access to social capital and out-of-school
learning opportunities to ensure every child
is successful at each stage of the educational
journey.
Without this strong, united leadership for
change, a collective, articulated vision, and
a sense of urgency for realizing that vision,
the nation will continue to produce mediocre
education results. This, in turn, will create
dire consequences for our economy and society.
Most critically, we will fail the next generation
of students. Who will stand up? ■

math is cool. In fact, the older I've
gotten, the more I've found that when
people want to talk about what I'm
doing, they don't want to talk about
football. They want to talk about
math. Even my teammates think it's
interesting.
Math isn't just about calculations
or memorizing formulas. Math is everywhere we look. It's in the science
behind a perfect football spiral, the
velocity of a game-winning three-point
shot in basketball. It's in the ratio of
ingredients you measure when you're
cooking. It's even in how you budget
to save for your first car. When I was
a kid, I didn't realize that math was
training my brain to solve these types
of problems.
Every day, we make hundreds of
decisions that are informed by our
quantitative judgment. Most of the
time, we don't even realize it. When
you're packing a lot of things into
a small bag, you have to think geometrically. When you're planning a
schedule or dividing your time, you're
thinking quantitatively. When you're

I want students to see
that math
extends far
past the
confines of
the classroom and into
everyday life."
trying to decide between two different
options, you're thinking analytically.
As a kid, I had no idea that I would
become a mathematician. But in
some sense, everybody has to become
a mathematician. We all face problems that require mathematical concepts. The better we can solve them,
the better off we'll be. ■
JOHN URSCHEL is a published
mathematician and an offensive lineman
for the Baltimore Ravens. He is currently
pursuing his doctorate in applied
mathematics from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

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Education Week - October 12, 2016

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