In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation extended grants to three educational organizations working to develop or enhance competency-based approaches in large, urbanized school systems. The grant initiative, called Project Mastery, funded the development of technology-enhanced tools, including curriculum materials and online learning…

In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created the Project Mastery grant program to support competency-based education initiatives in large school systems that serve a high proportion of disadvantaged youth. Competency-based education meets students where they are academically, provides students with opportunities for choice, and awards…

Research demonstrates that students' success in rigorous middle and high school math courses is positively associated with their admission to college, earnings later in life, and career prospects. The sequential nature of math course-taking, however, can create an opportunity structure that puts certain students at a disadvantage, specifically…

The adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments in mathematics are intended to provide all students in California with the knowledge and skills required to transition from high school to college-level coursework. This implementation will take time. Concurrent with these efforts, policymakers and…

The U.S. is in the midst of an effort to intensify middle school mathematics curricula by enrolling more 8th graders in Algebra. California is at the forefront of this effort, and in 2008 the state moved to make Algebra the accountability benchmark test for 8th grade mathematics. This paper takes advantage of this unevenly-implemented policy to…

Traditional methods of teaching algebra encourage students to identify algebraic notations and perform procedural computations without comprehending the underlying relationships between the different modes of algebraic representations involving graph, expression and tables. Such approaches might enable students to ace in standardized Mathematics…

This paper aims to tell how the Russian national examination in mathematics (the Uniform State Examination or USE) has been conducted most recently. The author must say at once that the history of the system of secondary school graduation examinations or even the history of the USE will be covered only to the small degree that is necessary for…

By working through well-designed tasks, students can expand their thinking about mathematical ideas and their approaches to solving mathematical problems. They can come to see the value of looking at tasks from different perspectives and of using different representations. This article discusses four tasks that encourage high school students and…

A single-subject withdrawal design paired with content quizzes was used to examine the effect of clickers on three dependent variables (student engagement, math quiz scores, and inappropriate behavior) with students diagnosed with high-incidence disabilities in a secondary grade level resource math class and a secondary grade level inclusive math…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of preservice mathematics teachers' understanding of inequalities. The design of the study was a multi-case study of secondary mathematics education preservice teachers with a focus on their understanding and the lessons that they plan and implement. Data from individual interviews,…

This study analyzes the nature of student interaction and discourse in an environment that includes the use of Java-based, curriculum-embedded mathematical software. The software "CPMP-Tools" was designed as part of the development of the second edition of the "Core-Plus Mathematics" curriculum. The use of the software on…

The purpose of this study was to determine the metaphors used by students to describe mathematical problem solving. This study focused on identifying how students interpret and perceive mathematical problem solving via conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). These perceptions and interpretations were coded and analyzed qualitatively and…

This study explores the impact of working with online learning activities of linear growing patterns (CLIPS) on students transitioning into Grade 9. Fifty students were interviewed about their understanding of linear growing patterns. Twenty-five students had participated in a study involving an experimental instructional approach that emphasized…

A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation to a group of secondary-school girls who were attending a workshop at a community college. The workshop's purpose was to encourage the girls to keep taking mathematics courses while in high school and beyond, in order to increase their future opportunities. The presentation was titled, "Where Can I Find…

In a study with ninth-grade mathematics students on learning the concept of variance, students experienced either direct instruction (DI) or productive failure (PF), wherein they were first asked to generate a quantitative index for variance without any guidance before receiving DI on the concept. Whereas DI students relied only on the canonical…