Education leaders in Virginia use early access to Algebra I as one method to provide students more time to take college preparatory courses in high school, thereby increasing students' likelihood of graduating prepared for college and careers. Yet, little data are available for these leaders to examine whether their approach is warranted. Members…

To increase opportunities for students to take more advanced math courses in high school, many school districts enroll grade 8 students in Algebra I, a gateway course for advanced math. But students who take Algebra I in grade 8 and skip other math courses, such as grade 8 general math, might miss opportunities to develop the foundational…

To increase opportunities for students to take more advanced math courses in high school, many school districts enroll grade 8 students in Algebra I, a gateway course for advanced math. But students who take Algebra I in grade 8 and skip other math courses, such as grade 8 general math, might miss opportunities to develop the foundational…

This document provides the two appendixes that accompany the full report, "Algebra I and College Preparatory Diploma Outcomes among Virginia Students Who Completed Algebra I in Grades 7-9." Appendix A, "Methods," details the data sources, study population, and analysis methods used in the study. Appendix B, "Supporting…

These are the appendixes for the report, "What Grade 7 Foundational Knowledge and Skills Are Associated with Missouri Students' Algebra I Achievement in Grade 8?" To increase opportunities for students to take more advanced math courses in high school, many school districts enroll grade 8 students in Algebra I, a gateway course for…

This brief utilizes data from the U.S. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study of 2011 (TIMSS) to investigate the extent to which teacher reports of content coverage in eighth grade algebra classes vary according to school racial/ethnic composition. The analytic sample is comprised of eighth grade algebra classrooms in 111 schools…

Numerical magnitude knowledge is related to current math abilities and predictive of future math learning. However, this relationship has previously been shown only for knowledge of positive magnitudes; the present study is the first, to our knowledge, to examine the connection between magnitude knowledge and math ability with negative integers.…

Psychologists and mathematics educators have long viewed flexibility as critical to students' mathematical development. In this paper, we focused on the multidimensional nature of flexibility to better understand how preference, knowledge, and use of effective methods for solving algebra problems are related. In Study 1, we identified…

We know from previous survey research that teachers who hold high expectations for all of their students significantly increase the odds that those young people will go on to complete high school and college. One indicator of teachers' expectations is their approach to grading--specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous…

The purpose for this correlational, explanatory study was to explain the influence of the length of the school day on the mean Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) scores on the 2016 Grade 8 Mathematics and 2016 Algebra II tests for students in various socioeconomic strata. The Grade 8 Mathematics sample included…

Previous research has established the importance of definitions in mathematics and have distinguished the difference between extracted and stipulated definitions. Much remains unknown, however, about the role definitions serve in developing students' disciplinary literacy. In this study, we analyze how definitions from four US Algebra 1 textbooks…

National standards and frameworks for mathematics, computer science, and technology emphasize the importance of teaching all children computational thinking (CT) skills. These skills are important for preparing citizens that are literate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and for participation in a society that is rapidly…

There is an ongoing need to support students' learning of linear functions, and the study of slope makes up a foundational component of this learning. We applied techniques from systemic functional linguistics to document the meanings that were established through spoken interaction between a student and her tutors during discussions of slope. We…

This study sought to answer the following questions: (1) Is it feasible to develop Academic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and collect data on them across member urban school districts? (2) Are comparisons between districts on academic performance measures valid and reliable? (3) Do districts collect and maintain requested KPI data in a way…

We describe how we supported middle-school students developing meanings for quadratic growth by bringing together three theoretical framings and designing a task sequence grounded in that framework. Specifically, this framework was assembled from the research on students' quantitative and covariational reasoning, Realistic Mathematics Education,…