Jo Boaler, a Stanford University professor and one of the country’s most influential experts on math education, has misrepresented scholars’ findings in her work to the point of showing a “reckless disregard for accuracy,” according to an anonymous complaint reportedly filed with Stanford on Wednesday.
The 100-page document details 52 instances in which Boaler, a professor of math education at the university’s Graduate School of Education, allegedly misstated or misconstrued outside studies about learning, neuroscience, and math education in her own articles, lectures, and books. Several of its examples appeared in a draft of the California math framework, a guidance document Boaler co-authored about how math should be taught in K-12 schools.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, which first reported on the document, the complaint was sent to Stanford’s provost and dean of research and alleges that Boaler is in violation of Stanford’s research policies. A research-policy handbook states that the university has in the past interpreted “reckless disregard for accuracy” as a “misdeed.” A Stanford spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that the university had received the complaint.
“We have no confirmation at this time that anything has been submitted to Stanford for review, and, as such, it would not be prudent to comment on an eventuality,” Ian McCaleb, a spokesman for Boaler, said in a written statement. “Nonetheless, Dr. Boaler is confident in the integrity and expansiveness of the research that backs her work.”
Boaler has drawn praise from many educators for advocating for math instruction that, broadly, emphasizes real-world applications, de-emphasizes memorization, and aims to reduce gender and racial disparities. It is a vision she’s laid out in popular books like Mathematical Mindsets and Limitless Mind, and through Youcubed, a Stanford research center that she co-founded to provide free teaching resources. Education Week recently named her one of the country’s most influential scholars.
The complaint reportedly filed on Wednesday lands as Boaler has drawn criticism for how her stances have affected math education in California and across the nation. For example, she praised San Francisco schools for adopting a policy of not teaching algebra during middle school. A decade later, the district is undoing that policy, following research showing that it did not reduce racial disparities as hoped.
Her influence has also touched higher ed: A Youcubed “data science” course, which bills itself as making math engaging and practical for high-schoolers, was until recently considered by the University of California to be an acceptable substitute for a required year of advanced algebra — a stance criticized by STEM professors and professionals, since the course teaches little advanced algebra. That approval has since been rescinded by a UC governance panel, a decision confirmed by a faculty workgroup.
The complaint details how many “references that Dr. Boaler cites to support claims in her work do not actually support her claims,” and argues that some of the discrepancies are especially consequential because they were cited at one point by the California math framework. (It does note, however, that many of the alleged misrepresentations were later removed in the final framework.) The complaint cites instances in which experts disagreed with how Boaler had described studies in their fields or conducted by them personally. Some of those examples were taken from a 2023 Chronicle profile of Boaler. The document also cites concerns raised by Brian Conrad, a Stanford mathematician who documented allegedly misrepresented citations in an earlier version of the California math framework. Conrad declined to comment for this story.
For example, Boaler’s book Limitless Mind claims that according to a 2013 study, “different areas of the brain were involved when people worked with symbols, such as numbers, than when they worked with visual and spatial information, such as an array of dots,” and that “mathematics learning and performance were optimized when these two areas of the brain were communicating with each other.” An earlier version of the California math framework cited the 2013 study in nearly identical language. But one of the researchers told The Chronicle last year that the study had done no brain imaging, so “it’s simply wrong to make any neural claims from that paper.” (At the time, Boaler defended her interpretation of the study.)
In another example cited by the complaint, Boaler has cited a study as showing that timed tests cause students to experience stress. An earlier version of the California math framework also cited the study to say that “such tests have been found to prompt math anxiety.” However, Conrad — and the author — noted that the study is not about math anxiety or timed tests, so it “must be removed” from the framework, Conrad has written.
