Building a Foundation for the Future: The Latest Research on Elementary School Math Curricula ————————— May 12, 2009 Charles Sumner School Washington, DC

SEE Forums:  Becki Herman, SEE Forums Director, Managing Research Scientist, American Institutes for Research (  Supported through a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (ies.ed.gov) of the U.S. Department of Education

 Where do you think US students currently rank in math, internationally?  Where do you think US students are projected to rank in 20 years?

Focus and Context  Curricula  Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (Pearson Scott Foresman)  Math Expressions (Houghton Mifflin)  Saxon Math (Harcourt Achieve)  Scott Foresman-Addison Wesely (Pearson Scott Foresman)  Existing Current Research Base  IES Practice Guide on RTI Math  National Math Advisory Panel Report  What Works Clearinghouse ES Math Curriculum Reports  BEE ES Math Curriculum Review

Panelists:  Roberto Agodini, Senior Economist, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.  Mary Lindquist, Professor Emeritus, Columbus College  Kati Haycock, President, Education Trust

Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula: Findings from First Graders in 39 Schools May 12, 2009 Roberto Agodini Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Study Design Compared math achievement of students in 4 curriculum groups:  Investigations in Number, Data, and Space  Math Expressions  Saxon Math  Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics (SFAW) Within each district, setup a school-level RCT with a total of:  39 schools  131 classrooms  1,309 students

Teacher reports about implementation  All attended initial training and nearly all (96%) attended follow-up training  Nearly all used their assigned curriculum as their core, and about a third supplemented  88% completing at least 80% of their curriculum's lessons  On average, Saxon teachers spent one more hour on math instruction per week than the other three curricula  Implemented a majority of their curriculum's features in the recommended way

Effects based on the ECLS-K math test  Student achievement was significantly higher in Math Expressions and Saxon schools, than Investigations and SFAW schools  The effect means that an average-performing student’s percentile rank would improve by 9 to 12 points if the school used Math Expressions or Saxon, instead of Investigations or SFAW  8 of 15 subgroups examined found significant differences between the curricula that are consistent with the main results

Next Steps  Two additional reports are planned –Next report will present results for all 110 study schools, for both 1 st and 2 nd grades –The last report will present results for sustained effects up through the 3 rd grade for a subset of study schools  Future reports also will examine implementation using classroom observation data

Questions and Discussion Are there curricula/instructional factors that might explain the strong effects after one year? How does one interpret the differences between the two high performing curricula? Would you expect the same results in years 2 and 3? Why? What implications does the research presented today have on policy? Practice? Research?

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