Many U.S. students enter elementary school with poor math skills. Students from different socioeconomic backgrounds also differ in math performance, with students from poor families lagging behind those from more affluent families. These differences grow over time, resulting in substantial...

Educators and policymakers have long debated which textbooks and their associated instructional approaches have the greatest impact on student learning in key subjects. Mathematica’s large-scale federal study of the effectiveness of four early math programs brings new clarity to what works in...

This report, the second from a large-scale study for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences of four early math programs, shows that the curriculum used by the study schools mattered. The study examined (1) Investigations in Number, Data, and Space...

Educators and policymakers have long debated which textbooks and their associated instructional approaches have the greatest impact on student learning in key subjects. Mathematica’s large-scale federal study of the effectiveness of four early math programs brings new clarity to what...

Many U.S. students enter elementary school with poor math skills. Students from different socioeconomic backgrounds also differ in math performance, with students from poor families lagging behind those from more affluent families. These differences grow over time, resulting in substantial...

This paper explores how the design features of curriculum materials might influence potential opportunities to learn and student outcomes through a comparative, documentary analysis of four mathematics curricula commonly used in the United States.

Read the final report from a large-scale, rigorous study examining how four math curricula affect achievement across two years—from first through second grades. The curricula were (1) Investigations in Number, Data, and Space; (2) Math Expressions; (3) Saxon Math; and (4) Scott...

This appendix provides the details that underlie the analyses reported in the evaluation brief, “After Two Years, Three Elementary Math Curricula Outperform a Fourth.†The details are organized in six sections: Study Curricula and Design (Section A), Data Collection (Section B),...