Here is the full context. Our current media environment includes a lot of cherry-picking to provoke outrage. Better to judge from a more complete text:
Learning Mathematics: for All
Introduction
Students learn best when they are actively engaged in questioning, struggling, problem solving, reasoning, communicating, making connections, and explaining. The research is overwhelmingly clear that powerful mathematics classrooms thrive when students feel a sense of agency (a willingness to engage in the discipline, based in a belief in progress through engagement) and an understanding that the intellectual authority in mathematics rests in mathematical reasoning itself (in other words, that mathematics makes sense) (Boaler, 2019 a, b; Boaler, Cordero & Dieckmann, 2019; Anderson, Boaler & Dieckmann, 2018; Schoenfeld, 2014). These factors support students as they develop their own identities as powerful mathematics learners and users. Further, active-learning experiences enable students to engage in a full range of mathematical activities—exploring, noticing, questioning, solving, justifying, explaining, representing and analyzing—making clear that mathematics represents far more than calculating.
Research is also clear that all students are capable of becoming powerful mathematics learners and users (Boaler, 2019a, c). This notion runs counter to many students’ ideas about school mathematics. Most adults can recall times when they received messages during their school or college years that they were not cut out for mathematics-based fields. The race-, class-, and gender-based differences in those who pursue more advanced mathematics make it clear that messages students receive about who belongs in mathematics are biased along racial, socioeconomic status, language, and gender lines, a fact that has led to considerable inequities in mathematics.
In 2015, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Andrei Cimpian, and colleagues interviewed university professors in different subject areas to gauge student perceptions of educational “gifts”—the concept that people need a special ability to be successful in a particular field. The results were staggering; the more prevalent the idea, in any academic field, the fewer women and people of color participating in that field. This outcome held across all thirty subjects in the study. More mathematics professors believed that students needed a gift than any other professor of STEAM content. The study highlights the subtle ways that students are dissuaded from continuing in mathematics and underscores the important role mathematics teachers play in communicating messages that mathematics success is only achievable for select students. This pervasive belief more often influences women and people of color to conclude they will not find success in classes or studies that rely on knowledge of mathematics.
Negative messages, either explicit (“I think you’d be happier if you didn’t take that hard mathematics class”) or implicit (“I’m just not a math person”), both imply that only some people can succeed. Perceptions can also be personal (“Math just doesn’t seem to be your strength”) or general (“This test isn’t showing me that these students have what it takes in math.” My other class aced this test.”). And they can also be linked to labels (“low kids,” “bubble kids,” “slow kids”) that lead to a differentiated and unjust mathematics education for students.
A fundamental aim of this framework is to respond issues of inequity in mathematics learning; equity influences all aspects of this document. Some overarching principles that guide work towards equity in mathematics include the following:
⦁ Access to an engaging and humanizing education—a socio-cultural, human endeavor—is a universal right, central among civil rights.
⦁ All students deserve powerful mathematics; we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents (Cimpian et al, 2015; Boaler, 2019) and the “cult of the genius” (Ellenberg, 2015).
⦁ The belief that “I treat everyone the same” is insufficient: Active efforts in mathematics teaching are required in order to counter the cultural forces that have led to and continue to perpetuate current inequities (Langer-Osuna, 2011).
⦁ Student engagement must be a design goal of mathematics curriculum design, co-equal with content goals.
⦁ Mathematics pathways must open mathematics to all students, eliminating option-limiting tracking.
⦁ Students’ cultural backgrounds, experiences, and language are resources for learning mathematics (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2006; Turner & Celedón-Pattichis, 2011; Moschkovich, 2013).
⦁ All students, regardless of background, language of origin, differences, or foundational knowledge are capable and deserving of depth of understanding and engagement in rich mathematics tasks.
[1] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfwchapter1.doc...