From ‘Math Wars’ to the Political Trenches?

Evers could bring a sharp tongue to key Ed. Dept. policy post.

Williamson M. Evers, an advocate for providing students with a strong foundation in core math content in the early grades, has been tapped to fill a high-level federal policy position at a time when the Bush administration has put forward a number of proposals revamping math and science nationwide.

Mr. Evers would become the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, if confirmed by the Senate. He has been a research fellow since 1995 at the Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. He’s also served as an education policy adviser in Iraq, and on both of President Bush’s presidential campaigns.

During the 1990s, Mr. Evers was a strong and frequent critic of what he and others described as weak and vague forms of instruction in math, which they believed emphasized conceptual understanding and overly abstract principles at the expense of students...