Chapter 12: Our Students and the “School to Prison Pipeline”

With the recent release and subsequent adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (NGA, 2010), mathematics teachers across the nation now work to adjust their instruction to support students in engaging with mathematics in new ways. The CCSSM represents a significant change in what many mathematics teachers teach, with new and reorganized content standards (Porter, McMaken, Hwang, & Yang, 2011) as well as an increased emphasis on the ways proficient students engage with mathematics, known as the Standards for Mathematical Practice. This increased attention to the processes of doing mathematics offers an opportunity for us and other teachers committed to Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice (TMfSJ) (Bartell, 2013; Wager & Stinson, 2012) to design learning experiences where students use mathematics to understand and change their worlds.