This article discusses how math teachers at San Marcos High School turned to an online curriculum and in-class assessments to increase student achievement. Setting aside their 7-year-old textbooks, teachers filled the void largely with an online math curriculum, called Agile Mind, that comes equipped with an array of assessment tools. The idea was…

This article reports on reactions to the U.S. Department of Education's first time decision to sit out an international study designed to show how advanced high school students around the world measure up in math and science. Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner of the department's National Center for Education Statistics, which normally takes the…

Computer software that shows students visual models of mathematical concepts--and lets them manipulate those models by doing math--has a certain intuitive appeal. Now, recent research on SimCalc Mathworlds, one of the pioneering examples of such software, is providing some of the best evidence so far that the approach can lead to gains in student…

This article focuses on the specialized academies in math and science, aimed at serving students for whom even a rigorous high school lineup of college-preparatory and honors courses is not enough. Math and science academies have been a fixture in states and school districts for decades, but they are drawing renewed interest as educators and…

On an overcast Sunday afternoon April 2005, a crowd of teenagers and their families file through the front gates of Great America theme park, located along a boulevard in the polished suburban circuitry of Silicon Valley. Emerging briskly from this migration of bodies onto the steps of the park auditorium, flanked by his mother and father, is a…