Urban Middle-Grade Student Mathematics Achievement Growth Under Comprehensive School Reform

Recognizing the need to implement standards-based instructional materials with school-wide coherence led some Philadelphia schools to adopt whole-school reform (WSR) models during the late 1990s. The authors report on the relation between mathematics achievement growth for middle-grade students on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments and the number of years schools implemented either a WSR model with National Science Foundation-supported mathematics curriculum or a WSR model without a mathematics curriculum component, from 1997 to 2000. As the authors hypothesized, mathematics achievement gains (Grades 5-8) were positively related to the number of years those schools were implementing a specific mathematics curricular reform. Additional analyses indicated that the relation held for both computation skills and ability to apply mathematics concepts.