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…

Most middle and high school students struggle with reading and writing in science. This may be because science teachers are reluctant to teach literacy in science class. New standards now require a shift in the way science teachers develop students' literacy in science. This survey study examined the extent to which science teachers report…

With the adoption of the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, writing has become an increasingly important area of instruction. Moreover, there has been an increased sophistication in the types of writing required of young children and the use of textual evidence expected in student writing. Historically, children have not been…

Parents, educators, and students have criticized the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects for expecting students to regurgitate evidence from assigned texts rather than think for themselves. This article argues that this popular critique is accurate and that…

Within the past two decades, federal and state governments have increased the frequency, number, and importance of standardized tests in elementary and secondary American schools. These tests are characterized by recognition-based frameworks that privilege "best" or "correct" answers, processes, and understandings which remain…

School reform, initiated by the No Child Left Behind Act, has developed Common Core State Standards to promote both equity and excellence in education. The local problem that this study addressed involved understanding the effects of Common Core State Standards implementation on Professional Development and the use of Professional Learning…

There has been much debate about having standardized curricula content standards for all. Some have criticized state curriculum content standards for varying in quality by state. The purpose of this study was to compare content complexity as it appears within the high school English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the former…

Using a college admissions test as the statewide summative assessment is an attractive but risky option for some policymakers and parents. These assessments are used for admissions by nearly all higher education institutions, are shorter in length than most state-designed and consortia assessments, have brand name recognition, and are known for…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative was initially met with great enthusiasm from politicians and education experts. However, as states began rolling out the standards, backlash against the Common Core became widespread, and several states ended up pulling out of the initiative. To explore and better understand why there was such a…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is one of the most current reforms in the U.S. educational system. The standards were introduced, adopted, and implemented by 46 states along with the District of Columbia in 2009. Since the adoption of the CCSS, educators have expressed concern regarding the implementation process, specifically…

Instructional discussion is a teaching method used in many classrooms across grade levels. In fact, the Common Core State Standards promote the use of instructional discussion in secondary classrooms (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018a). Students, however, are not always taught best practices for engaging in a discussion and may feel…

Consistent with common core state standards and recent legislation such as the Every Student Succeeds Act, middle level teachers are establishing high expectations for all students. Middle level students are expected to make connections among topics, cite evidence from text, and engage in higher level thinking skills across subject areas. Often,…

This manuscript explores how the changing policy context of common standards may have influenced the provision of curriculum materials in the United States. Many educational reforms do little to change the nature of classroom instruction, and prior research has argued that this constancy is, at least in part, due to the common use of instructional…

In this paper, a learning progression for geometric transformations is developed based on research that demonstrates the importance of viewing transformations as functions of the plane. The 5 levels of the progression reflect a student's evolving understanding of transformations as functions and their evolving understanding of the domain of these…

Clovis Unified School District (USD) serves about 43,000 students in a city just northeast of Fresno. The district is diverse, serving sizeable groups of Latino/a and Hmong students, and 40% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The district's proportion of English learners is below the state average, but students are…