California teachers accuse each other of racism and harassment while arguing the best way to teach math

A UC Berkeley professor and a Stanford professor launched into a social media feud this week, with grew from arguments over math into accusations of racism and harassment.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the feud is rooted in battles over how to teach math to K-12 students in the state, and specifically over whether to offer Algebra 1 classes in middle schools.

Stanford University Professor Jo Boaler has led efforts to rewrite the state’s math framework with a focus on students of color and English learners, and her work is proposed in the new statewide math framework which pushed Algebra 1 to ninth grade.

While the state’s proposed framework is a 900-page document comprised of recommendations rather than mandates, it has reignited the debate, with opponents saying that offering the class at a younger age allows these students too take calculus in high school.

On Tuesday, a math teacher at San Francisco’s Lowell High School opposed to Boaler’s approach posted a contract to twitter showing that the professor made $5,000 per hour training teachers in the Oxnard school district.

According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, "Many public and private university professors often charge $10,000 or more for one-time speaking fees or other professional engagements and some teacher training consultants charge up to $50 a head per day."

The contract revealed not just her fees, but her home address as well.

The post’s contents were in violation of Twitter’s policies, and the Lowell teacher, Elizabeth Statmore, said she wasn’t aware the contract had included the home address and subsequently deleted the posts.

One of Statmore’s tweets was retweeted by UC Berkeley Professor Jelani Nelson, who teachers electrical engineering and computer science, calling Boaler out for "alarmingly lucrative consulting deals."

Nelson told the San Fransisco Chronicle on Tuesday evening that he did not retweet the Statmore’s post that included the home address of Boaler.

Following the retweet, Boaler said that she emailed Nelson to notify him that police and lawyers were taking up "the sharing of private details about me on social media."

"I was shocked to see that you are taking part in spreading misinformation and harassing me online," she wrote to him in an email.

Nelson, who is black, posted the email online, and accused Boaler of calling the cops on a black person without reason.

"A professor just threatened me with police. After BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Golfcart Gail, and all the memes, we now have Retweet Rachel," he posted on Twitter. "Public advisory: don’t call the cops on black people for no reason. Black people disagreeing with you on Twitter is not a crime."

According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, Boaler did not respond to Nelson online.

She told the outlet that she had reached out to Nelson only to ask him not to share her personal information, referring to the contract posts.

"I wanted him to know that the posts by a teacher sharing my address had been sent to police/lawyers, as a courtesy, because I thought it better that he did not engage with her," she said. "He changed that to say I was threatening him with police/lawyers. I was not."

"I am really saddened by what has happened on Twitter - and the number of people who believed his claim that I was 'calling the cops on a black man,"' she said. "I wrote to him to invite him to chat, professor to professor, and am very sorry that my mentioning the police was ever perceived as a threat. That was never my intent."

Boaler noted that she has had to change her phone number and has received multiple threats since the posting.

The final draft of the math framework is in the last stages of review, and will be voted on by the state Board of Education in July.

The framework has reportedly toned down some of the social justice language used, and departed from the current framework in allowing the offering of Algebra 1 to be a local decision.