What would it look like to engage in more humanizing assessment practices, practices that support the positive development of students' identity, agency, and belonging? In a Southern California school district, a group of teachers have been working toward doing exactly that. One of the first things the teachers did was to recognize that the…

The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) looks across the world for innovative and successful policies and practices, grounded in research and supported by the wisdom of practice, to share with partners. In response to concerns about student performance in mathematics, particularly following the precipitous drop in test scores…

Background/Context: Mathematics education, especially at early grade levels, continues to be an important focus for national education improvement efforts, and more districts are introducing technology as part of their solution. Along with increasing consistent delivery of personalized and individualized learning to students, technology- and…

California's school system is under tremendous long-run fiscal pressure; allocating resources efficiently is therefore paramount. Economic analysis--making sure districts and schools are spending their budgets wisely--is the method used to identify effectiveness and efficiency. This method responds to the question educational professionals face:…

Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways mathematics textbook adoption practices…

Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. We use a lens of institutional theory and interviews with district leaders in a stratified…

Drawing on 3 years of observational, survey, and interview data, this article highlights the importance of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) for school staff members supporting Spanish-speaking, newcomer students in large, comprehensive high schools that often lack the resources to directly support this population. We highlight how…

We describe our team-taught, interdisciplinary course "Numb3rs in Lett3rs & Fi1ms: Mathematics in Literature and Cinema," which explores mathematics in the context of modern literature and cinema. Our goal with this course is to advance collaborations between mathematics and the written/theatre-based creative arts.

Background: This paper describes the Problem-Solving Cycle model of professional development and the Mathematics Leadership Preparation model of PD leader preparation. These models form the backbone of our current research-practice partnership project in which we are working with a large urban district to adapt these models to develop district…

How can children's natural perceptuo-motor skills be harnessed for teaching and learning mathematical structure? We address this question in the case of the integers. Existing research suggests that adult mental representations of integers recruit perceptuo-motor functionalities involving symmetry. Building on these findings, we designed a…

This study utilizes a mixed methods exploratory design to examine the nature of math faculty engagement in the student learning outcomes assessment cycle. The focus of the study is on the types of changes that math faculty are implementing as a result of assessment outcomes and the institutional environmental factors that impact faculty engagement…

In the deconstruction of the California state standards for trigonometry, linear algebra and mathematical analysis for the Cal-PASS (California Partnership for Achieving Student Success) Content Standards Deconstruction projects, it became apparent that terms were used for which no definition was given. The San Diego Central Cal-PASS Math…

More than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund analyst--explains how he began tutoring his cousins in math by posting short lessons for them on YouTube. Other people began watching the lessons and sending Khan adulatory notes.…

The original version, Version 1.0, of this document was first published in 2005. This current version, Version 2.0, includes updates based on feedback from faculty across the state. Also a listing of the Algebra I California Content Standards organized into clusters has been added in Appendix #1. Cal-PASS is unique in that it is the only data…

THIS REPORT ON THE PROGRESS OF THE IBM 1800/1500 CAI SYSTEM, AN AUTOMATED READING AND ARITHMETIC CURRICULUM FOR CULTURALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN IN THE PRIMARY GRADES, DISCUSSES THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN GETTING THE SYSTEM INTO OPERATION IN THE BRENTWOOD SCHOOL IN STANFORD, CALIF. THE OPERATIONAL FEATURES OF THIS IBM SYSTEM AND THE METHODS BY WHICH THE…