In 1987 the Toronto (Ontario, Canada) Board of Education launched the development of the Toronto Board Benchmark Program to establish benchmarks, which are samples of student performance on a wide range of language and mathematics tasks. These samples, in print and video, show what students in grades 3, 6, and 8 can do on learning tasks based on…

Education researchers have long been concerned with finding the appropriate method for correlational analysis of hierarchical data. In recent years, the alternative of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has come into extensive use. HLM users typically center some or all student-level predictors either at the grand mean or at the school means. This…

The purpose of this exploratory research was to examine two middle school mathematics teachers' views of the nature of mathematics and their perceptions about the purpose of education as it translates into planning for instruction and teaching. In addition, students in one seventh grade mathematics class of each teacher were surveyed about their…

This volume presents information on secondary vocational education compiled by the recently completed National Assessment of Vocational Education. Chapter 1 provides information about regional, district, and school-level availability of vocational education and the institutions that provide it. It reports the following: availability differs by…

In Talent Development Middle Schools, students needing extra help in mathematics participate in the Computer- and Team-Assisted Mathematics Acceleration (CATAMA) course. CATAMA is an innovative combination of computer-assisted instruction and structured cooperative learning that students receive in addition to their regular math course for about…

An important feature of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is its ability to document trends in academic achievement on core curriculum areas over an extended period of time. This report presents the major results of the NAEP 1996 science, mathematics, reading, and writing long-term assessments. These results chart trends going…

Calculators were used in the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade public school and private school students and in the Trial State Assessment of 8th-grade public school students. Before they were tested, all of the students were trained briefly in how to use the equipment. NAEP collected information…

The objective of this pretest-posttest Quasi-Experimental Design study was to determine the effects of LOGO Based Instruction (LBI) compared to instruction by teacher lecture and pencil-and-paper activities on: (1) students' understanding of the concepts of point, ray, line, and line segment; (2) students' attitudes toward learning geometry,…

This report presents findings of the National Academy of Education Panel on the Evaluation of the Trial State Assessment (TSA) concerning the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics TSA program. The Panel's recommendations regarding the continuation of TSAs for review by the Congress, states, and Executive Branch of the…

The launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 initiated a series of reform movements in mathematics education. These reform movements provide a framework from which to chronicle the development of interest into gender differences in mathematics learning. The paper examines these issues and is presented in six sections. The first section…

Since the authorization of the use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) through the Trial State Assessment to provide state-based data, debate over the proposed expansion of the NAEP has strengthened. To assist states in analyzing and interpreting 1990 data on eighth-grade mathematics and to assist in planning subsequent NAEP…

A study was done of student achievement and its relation to family and community poverty in light of 20 years of education reform and Chapter 1 funding since 1966. The study used the following three long-term studies of American high school students, in which measures of achievement and socioeconomic standing are meant to be comparable among…

Twenty-one magnet programs in the Houston Independent School District in Texas feature an enriched curriculum in science, math, and/or computers (science/math). Of these, 12 are elementary programs, 4 are middle school programs, and 5 are high school programs. In these programs, a total of 9,574 students were served during the 1990-91 school year:…

Reasons why African American and Hispanic American students tend to have lower scores than do White students on standardized mathematics and reading tests are examined, focusing on a study from Texas. Results of the Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) for approximately 900 school districts show that where the…

This study investigated the role of problem structure and metacognitive control in the analogical transfer of performance of 40 13- and 14-year-old gifted and highly gifted math students. Average and above average 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds served as comparison groups. Students were given three algebra problems with solutions, followed by two…