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As requested by the GE Foundation, the main goal of this review was to identify mathematics and science curricula as well as professional development models at the middle and high school levels that had been deemed effective based on their success in increasing student achievement. Because of its emphasis on student achievement, this approach differs from that typically used at the local level and that adopted by other recent studies conducted to find "effective" curricula and professional development models.
Historically, curriculum choice at the local level has often been made by a committee that decides which curriculum to adopt based on considerations only peripherally related to student achievement—such as state-imposed standards, recommendations of others, cost, and presentations by publishers' representatives. Choice of professional development models follows a similar pattern. Indeed, there has been very little else available to guide school districts in their curriculum selection process, since for most curricula and textbooks the only data at hand are publishers' figures on
the number of adoptions. That has been changing. There is a growing movement to assess the effectiveness of math and science curricula through various methodologies, including content analyses, comparative studies, case studies, and synthesis studies.1 And while there have been several studies of the effectiveness of professional development practices, very few have measured the effects of these practices on student achievement.
The focus of this review, reflecting the GE Foundation's interests, was to identify current math and science curricula and professional development at the middle and high school levels that showed evidence of positive impact on student achievement. Our goal was to come up with enough math and science curricula with relatively credible evaluations to provide some choice to districts and schools that wanted guidance in selecting a curriculum and that wished to use effectiveness as a selection criterion.
As can be seen from the criteria above, we chose increases in student achievement as the measure of effectiveness.2 We limited our review to evaluations that compared student achievement outcomes elicited by the curriculum being studied with student achievement outcomes of another curriculum. Where data were available, we also took into account the content validity of the assessments used as well as the statistical significance and the effect size of the differences reported. Our review made a special effort to identify eligible studies that disaggregated results by performance of student subgroups. Our review of evaluation studies of professional development was similarly limited to studies that used student achievement as the measure of effectiveness.
Notes from this Section
1. The majority of these efforts have been undertaken by AAAS, the National Research Council (NRC), and the U.S. Department of Education. The AAAS study used content analysis, the NRC study did not rate specific curricular math programs, and the U.S. Department of Education study reviewed middle school math programs only.
2. As determined by quantifiably measurable outcomes, such as test scores.
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Disclaimer: The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
