9361290 Mills For most students, assessment means a single score or grade. Such one-dimensional assessments fail to convey information about the student's creativity, originality, ability to do independent work, problem solving skills, or ability to work cooperatively. As curriculum reform occurs across the country to meet the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards, innovative and alternative methods of assessment of student learning and progress must also follow. Student work itself should serve as the context for rubrics for evaluation. In this SBIR Phase I project, Key Curriculum Press will research and create such alternative assessment materials for four technology-rich curricula to support teachers who wish to align their assessment practices with mathematics curriculum reform. Specifically, the research will involving linkages with national assessment reform efforts; surveys of teachers using traditional and alternative assessment techniques; interviews of teachers to develop case studies of teachers who change assessment methods; development and refinement of prototype assessment tasks; and pilot studies and evaluation of these prototypes. This project will make a contribution to the generation of practical assessment materials--practical both in the sense that they will be implementable and that they are derived from classroom practices--that are complementary to the development of technology- rich curricula and thus go beyond the traditional methods. ***
