Book Description

The purpose of this large-scale, national study is to determine whether some early elementary school math curricula are more effective than others at improving student math achievement, thereby providing educators with information that may be useful for making adequate yearly progress (AYP). This report presents results from the first cohort of first grade in 39 schools participating in the evaluation during the 2006-2007 school year, with the goal of determining the relative effects of different early elementary math curricula on student math achievement in disadvantaged schools. The report also examines whether curriculum effects differ for student subgroups in different instructional settings. A competitive process was used to select four curricula Investigations in Number, Data, and Space; Math Expressions; Saxon Math; and Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics) that represent many of the approaches used to teach elementary school math in the United States. An experimental design randomly assigned schools in each participating district to the four curricula, setting up an experiment in each district. The relative effects of the curricula were calculated by comparing math achievement of students in the four curriculum groups. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques were used to conduct statistical tests to assess the significance of all the results. Curriculum implementation findings include: (1) All teachers received initial training from the publishers and 96 percent received follow-up training; combined training varied by curriculum and ranged from 1.4 to 3.9 days; (2) Nearly all teachers reported using their assigned curriculum as their core math curriculum and about a third reported supplementing their curriculum with other materials; (3) Eighty-eight percent of teachers reported completing at least 80 percent of their assigned curriculum; and (4) On average, Saxon Math teachers reported spending one more hour on math instruction per week than did teachers of the other curricula. Achievement findings include: (1) Student math achievement was significantly higher in schools assigned to Math Expressions and Saxon Math, than in schools assigned to Investigations in Number, Data, and Space and Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics; and (2) Math achievement in schools assigned to the two more effective curricula was not significantly different, nor was math achievement in schools assigned to the two less effective curricula. Another 71 schools joined the study during the 2007-2008 school year and curriculum implementation occurred in both the first and second grades in all participating schools. A follow-up report is planned that will present results based on all 110 schools participating in the evaluation, and for both the first and second grades. The study also is supporting curriculum implementation and data collection during the 2008-2009 school year in a subset of schools, in which implementation will be expanded to the third grade. A third report is planned that will present those results. Four appendixes are included; (1) Data Collection and Response Rates; (2) Teacher-Reported Frequency of Implementing Other Curriculum-Specific Activities; (3) Glossary of Curriculum-Specific Terms; and (4) Constructing the Analysis Samples and Estimating Curriculum Effects. (Contains 66 footnotes, 10 figures and 43 tables.) A table of acronyms is included. [For Executive Summary of this report, see ED504419.].