Comments on S. Pogrow's suggestion that educational programs should be judged by the degree to which schools using them achieve "surprising scores." Emphasizes the importance of the use of control groups in program evaluation. (SLD)

Saxon Algebra is a full-year mathematics curriculum designed for 8th- and 9th-grade students. This WWC Study Report reviews a study of the effects of the Saxon Algebra curriculum on 8th-grade student achievements. Students using this curriculum were compared with students using a curriculum from the University of Chicago Mathematics Project…

The central question of this study was whether there was a difference in mathematics achievement between students taught in an ICL classroom and those taught in a traditional classroom. The author was also interested in the experience students had while using the software. Thus, students in the ICL curriculum were surveyed about their attitudes…

Peters (1992) reports that students in the intervention and control groups showed gains on the Orleans-Hanna test during the course of the school year (that is, from pretest to posttest). However, the test score gains of the two groups did not differ significantly. There was no evidence that the Saxon Algebra curriculum (intervention) was more or…

A QuickBASIC program is described that can be used to conduct Dunnett-like comparisons on a set of independent proportions. The statistical method used, based on Levy's statistical method (1975), is an extension of the well-known Dunnett test for multiple comparisons on means. (Author/SLD)

I Can Learn Algebra (ICL) is a standards-based math curriculum for use in grades 7 through 10 that was developed by New Orleans-based JRL Enterprises. ICL provides self-paced, interactive, computerized lessons and frequent assessments to track student progress. This Brief WWC Study Report reviews a study of the effects of ICL students' achievement…

There was no statistically significant difference in student performance between students receiving the Expert Mathematician curriculum and those in the control groups. Baker reported negligible differences between the Expert Mathematician intervention and control groups. The outcome measure is sufficiently reliable, based on the author's report…

Schneider found no statistically significant differences between the intervention and comparison groups on the school-level Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) analyzed in the study. The findings may have been affected by only three schools implementing more than one-third of the total math problems in each year and grade. In addition, the…