Setting the Standards

Abstract

On March 21, 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) held a press conference in Washington, DC, to release the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1989). The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards had been under development for almost five years (Crosswhite, Dossey, & Frye, 1989), and public interest was high; the press conference, which some had expected to be quite small, was moved to the larger venue of the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington. Since NCTM had not organized such a large media event before, it was an exciting time for the organization. As Marilyn Hala, an NCTM staff member, recalled: This is the first time I ever remember that we had a bank of six or seven video cameras in the back of the room. There were probably 200 people at the press conference in the Willard Ballroom. It was quite impressive! You had to walk by these members of the press — these cameras — to sit down.1