Description:
The Math Mafia by Emily T. Hamilton explores how a network of mathematicians, educators, and policymakers drove math education reform in twentieth-century America, linking it to national security and federal policy. Hamilton argues this group's influence helped institutionalize standardized testing and federal involvement, especially during the Cold War.
Review Quotes:
"Drawing on a wealth of wide-ranging primary sources, Emily Hamilton reveals the astonishing constancy of anxiety over mathematics achievement in the United States and how mathematics education became a model for today's assessment-oriented K-12 education." --Jemma Lorenat, author of Instructing the Mathematical Imagination