A December 2015 NFB Braille Monitor essay by Carlton Anne Cook Walker named the historical 'War of the Dots' directly, a month before UEB rollout, and logged the earliest located state-by-state Nemeth/UEB roster (14 of 21 declared states retaining Nemeth)

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Carlton Anne Cook Walker, then manager of braille education programs at the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan Institute, published in the December 2015 Braille Monitor — a month before UEB's formal January 4, 2016 implementation date — an essay showing that a repeat of the historical "War of the Dots" was the explicit fear driving NFB's lobbying against states adopting "All UEB" math instruction: "We do not need a repeat of the 'War of the Dots' —especially not in the vital areas of math and science." The sentence sits in the "Talking Points" companion document reproduced within her byline article — material her own letter describes as enclosed with NFB President Mark Riccobono's August 24, 2015 letter to every state department of education, so the phrasing may originate with the NFB collectively rather than with Cook Walker's individual hand (and may date from August 2015, earlier still).

This predates and differs in kind from the already-vaulted Jacobson piece (January 2016), which posed the parallel as a rhetorical question ("are we turning the clock back one hundred years"). The Cook Walker essay names the historical episode directly, by its own title, and treats the comparison as settled fact needing no argument. Both are NFB Braille Monitor pieces, but this one is earlier and more explicit — evidence that practitioners were self-consciously invoking the specific 1871-1932 episode by name at the exact moment the modern split was forming, not only in hindsight.

The same essay reports an NFB canvass of states' declared positions at that moment — the earliest state-by-state roster located in this vault's research. As of December 2015, fourteen states (California, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin) had indicated they would retain Nemeth; two (North Carolina, Utah) declared an "All UEB" route while still honoring Nemeth requests; one (Massachusetts) said it would eliminate Nemeth entirely; one (South Dakota) would fully support both; and three (Kansas, North Dakota, Wyoming) pushed the decision to individual districts. The essay adds that "the majority of the states have not taken a final position" — only 21 of 50 states had any declared stance. As an official NFB publication under a named author writing in her organizational capacity, this clears Tier 2 and the quantitative floor for the 21-state breakdown; it is nonetheless an advocacy canvass of declared intentions, not a neutral survey of enacted policy — the same caveat the later BEAR count carries. A primary Tier-1 roster to check it against remains the open ask at question-verify-nemeth-ueb-state-mandates-split.