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Alameda papers recently contained three seemingly immiscible and incongruous articles.

One warned of escalating tension between the Alameda Unifi ed School District (AUSD) and its teachers; another reported that the majority of California State University (CSU) freshmen were unprepared for college math; and a third was a profusion of recycled accolades and cant edu-babble spouted by the superintendent's chief apologists: the venerable Ron Mooney and Margie Sherrat.

Given the employment opportunities for administratively tainted teachers, few educators have the temerity to wade into this discussion.

The Constitution may guarantee freedom of the press and free speech, yet nowhere does it require us to exercise it, nor protect us from the repercussions of doing so.

When I fi nd myself shying away from my irreverent keyboard and putting my security blanket ahead of free speech, I am reminded of the civic courage of Mario Savio, Boris Yeltsin and that lone pedestrian at Tiananmen Square: Wang Weilin a.k.a. "Tank Man" who was summarily disappeared by the secret police.

The good news blended in with the usual blandishments was that the reduction in state funding — which AUSD has been bracing for — will only amount to $113,000.

Were the superintendent to toss her bonus — not her pay raise and additional perks — back into the AUSD cookie jar, the effective shortfall could be reduced to $98,000: below the six fi gures AUSD pays many in its larded phalanx of lawyers, educrats and apparatchiks.

Reading the Board Mavens' report ("Keeping Alameda's Schools Strong," Dec. 15), it is hard to reconcile the anesthetizing panegyrics with Cal State East Bay's claim that 73 percent of this year's freshmen were not ready for college math.

Quoting Claudia Quezada, the Early Assessment Program (EAP) Coordinator for California State University, "In 2010, of the 138 juniors at Encinal High who participated in the math portion of the EAP, 43 showed they needed more college preparation."

And what about the juniors who did not participate in the EAP; how much math were they equipped with?

As a math teacher, I can speculate on the dismal math statistics.

My sense is that there exists a pernicious "win, win, win, win" situation that stymies meaningful math cognitive development and reduces the little math achievement evidenced to merely a memory function. Imagine a teacher who ladles out high grades irrespective of math mastery.

Ostensibly, the student wins, the parent wins, the principal who does not hear from grousing, enabling parents wins and the teacher who basks in job security wins.

Now picture a teacher who goads students to ascend Bloom's Taxonomy beyond rote and into such terra incognita as adaptive reasoning, strategic competence, conceptual understanding, productive disposition, procedural fl uency, synthesis, application and metacognition. Risky stuff!

Not to invoke a forced dichotomy, but math education has two options: avoid risk and ensure functional failure, or take constructive risks and risk failure.

UCSF Professor Bruce Alberta, former head of the National Academy of Sciences, recently reminded educators that "failure is a way of growing wiser" and "rote learning teaches nothing."

With teachers prudently hunkering down, cautiously lowering the rigor bar and skulking toward mediocrity, is there any wonder that math and its ancillary critical thinking skills are fl at-lined or declining?

In a state that survives on its entrepreneurial and critically thinking skills, should we be crimping our life line by intimidating our math teachers?

What happened to AP Computer Science at Encinal?

If it is not AUSD that will provide replacements for Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore, then what district will? Why are we abrogating our responsibility to help staff the high tech culture of California?

Jeffrey R Smith is a math teacher at Encinal High School.