The proposed research project will conduct a longitudinal study of students who took different middle school mathematics curricula. The proposed study will analyze data from over 4,000 students enrolled in the 10 Milwaukee public high schools. The students will be tracked over four years of high school through their completion of 12th grade. The study has two research questions: 1) How do Connected Mathematics Program (CMP) and non-CMP students perform on various tasks measuring a broad spectrum of mathematical thinking and reasoning, with a focus on algebra in high school? 2) What are the similarities and differences between the curriculum and instruction that CMP and non-CMP students are receiving in high school and the curriculum and instruction they received in middle school? The research will be conducted by a team at the University of Delaware and Marquette University.
A quasi-experimental research design will be used to compare students with a CMP background to students with a more traditional mathematics approach. The project design includes using multiple measures for student achievement along with observations of classroom practices. Data will be analyzed using multivariate statistics including HLM and ANCOVA with nested data. The initial sample size will be nearly 1000 students who took CMP in middle schools who enrolled in one of the 10 high schools and over 3,000 students to took some other mathematics curriculum in middle school. Since students will be followed through their four years in high school, it is anticipated that the group who will be taking mathematics through 12th grade will decline by at least 25%.
Results from the research will report on the longer term impact of a NSF supported middle school mathematics program on students' algebraic conceptual knowledge into high school up to four years after leaving 8th grade. Findings will be disseminated at conferences and through journal articles. The project addresses a research problem of compelling national importance deeply rooted in mathematics education by analyzing the efficacy of the long range impact of a mathematics program.
