country's international ranking in math has not been anything to boast about. In

the Third International Math & Science Study (TIMSS) of 1995, Singapore,

Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Belgium and the Czech Republic ranked as the six world

leaders, while U.S. 4th-graders ranked in the 56th percentile, 8th-graders in

the 32nd percentile and high school seniors in the 12th percentile.

In 1998, some California schools adopted a new math curriculum modeled on the

curricula of Japan, Singapore and Poland. Their goal: Improve math achievement.

According to a recent article in Educational Studies in Mathematics, performance

of students in those schools improved significantly from 1998-2002.

Successful transplant
"Our research, using experimental

data, clearly demonstrates that quality Asian/European curriculum can be

successfully transplanted virtually intact to North American schools and gives

superior results almost immediately," the researchers report. "This is true even

in school districts where parental involvement is almost certainly well below

that of the typical Asian country."

Over a five-year period, California students in grades 2-6 from four school

districts that taught the Key Standards curriculum significantly outperformed

students in two school districts that did not make the curriculum change, write

researchers Wayne Bishop of California State University, Los Angeles, John Hook

of Ojai Unified School District and William Hook of University of Victoria in

British Columbia.

8th grade algebra preparation
The 13,000 students in the

four Key Standards schools went from far-below average to above-average

achievement, improving at a rate of eight percentile points per year over the

five-year span compared with 1.8 percentile points per year for the control

group, the study found.

The six school districts in the study had high percentages of economically

disadvantaged and immigrant students.

Viewhref="http://www.ernweb.com/public/department33.cfm">color=#cc0000> recent issuescolor=#cc0000> of Educational Research Newsletter.

To determine why U.S. K-8th-grade students lagged behind in international

rankings, the National Research Center-TIMSS at Michigan State University

carried out an extensive study of math curricula in the top-ranked countries and

in 21 participating states. The study found that the 6 leading math countries

had remarkably similar curricular content and that there were also striking

similarities among the curricula of participating U.S. states.

"The consensus curriculum of the six leading nations was labeled a 'quality'

curriculum, and the less successful consensus curriculum of the U.S. states was

labeled 'inadequate'," the researchers write.

Four content characteristics were found to be important:

• The number of topics for each grade (U.S. had too many topics, particularly

  in lower grades);

• repetition of topics (U.S. curriculum was highly repetitive with topics

  introduced too early, repeated, yet taught with too little depth);

• logical order of topics (topics in U.S. were not presented in a logical,

  step-by-step order); and

• level of topics (topics were not very demanding, especially in middle

  school).

The Key Standards curriculum has a sharply reduced number of topics in the

early grades. For example, the 1st-grade Key Standards curriculum has only three

topics (whole number meaning, whole number operations, and patterns) while the

old curriculum has 19 topics.

The new curriculum also addressed the other issues, including coherence,

minimum amount of repetition and demanding topics in the middle grades.

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here.

A primary focus of the Key Standards curriculum, researched and written by

Stanford University mathematics professors, is to prepare all students for

8th-grade Algebra I. The Key Standards curriculum was used in combination with

Saxon Math textbooks. The Content Review Panel, comprising representatives of

the mathematicians who wrote the new curriculum, determined that the textbooks

for grades 1-3 were appropriate for the curriculum, but that grades 4-6 should

use textbooks for grades 5-7 (grade 3 classes would have the option of using the

grade 4 textbook).

No special training
The teachers in the districts that

adopted Key Standards did not receive any special training that would explain

the improved performance, the researchers write; interestingly, the teachers in

the two control districts did participate in an ambitious teacher training

program.

"It appears difficult to overcome the negative effects of an inadequate

curriculum solely with teacher training," the authors write.

"A Quality Math Curriculum in Support of Effective Teaching for

Elementary Schools", William Hook, Wayne Bishop and John Hook, Educational

Studies in Mathematics, Volume 65, June 2007, pp. 125-148.

Published in ERN September 2007, Volume 20, Number 6