With numeracy for all: Urban schools and the reform of mathematics education

The reform of mathematics education in urban schools cannot and will not succeed without a social transformation that liberates young people from the hunger poverty, and violence that trap so many in the ghetto of despair: This liberation is both an economic necessity and an ethical imperative. It requires developing new strategies for the delivery of services that heal and protect America's youth. The most successful reform initiatives will focus on the whole child the whole family, the whole community - the whole socioeconomic matrix. For this reason, we face a compelling need to accelerate the still-nascent movement toward comprehensive, coordinated, school-based services. This need is closely linked to a second: We must no longer tolerate the covert racism and ethnocentrism that subject traditionally underserved students to material that - because it fails to challenge them - clears a pathway to boredom and disillusionment. The tyranny of low expectations must end.