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Abstract: As more attention is placed on designing digital educational games to align with schools' academic aims (e.g., Common Core), questions arise regarding how professional development (PD) may support teachers' using games for instruction and how such integration might impact students' achievement. This study seeks to (a) understand how teachers use PD resources (e.g., technology personnel and game‐use workshops) for integration; (b) determine how teachers integrate games into their instruction; and (c) examine how those teaching practices are associated with student achievement. This mixed method study used survey and interview responses from elementary school teachers (n = 863) with access to PD resources for implementing a math game intervention and standardized math‐test scores from their second‐ through sixth‐grade students (n = 10,715). Findings showed few teachers sought PD assistance for integration, but many desired such support. Some reported using integrative practices (i.e., referencing game and using game‐generated progress reports) to identify struggling students, whereas several found integration challenging. Teachers' reordering of game objectives to align with lessons and viewing of game‐based PD videos were associated with increased student math achievement in our OLS‐analysis. However, this result was no longer statistically significant within a school fixed‐effects model, suggesting school differences may influence how strongly teachers' practices are associated with student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which investigated the effect of classroom placement and overall school academic performance on fourth and fifth grade gifted students's academic achievement. The study involved fourth and fifth graders from a school district in the Central Valley of California, who were divided into two groups. It was found that in both mathematics and language arts, gifted students enrolled in homogeneous class scored higher than gifted students in heterogeneous class. The impact of classroom placement on achievement is examined.

The article presents information on the use of object collections to teach beginning mathematics through opportunities for oral counting, development of efficient counting strategies, grouping objects strategically, recording numbers, and representing student thinking. The authors use examples from their school, the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School (UES), a laboratory school of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles. They note that research shows the need for much experience with counting to develop number sense and mathematical ability. Observation of and discussion with the children allows the authors to study how the information is being processed.

In this article we described how an underperforming school district used research and theory on curriculum, assessment, implementation, and school and classroom organization to develop and implement district standards and improve the achievement of elementary school students. Key reforms included teachers developing essential curriculum standards, standards-based criterion-referenced tests, and standards-based extended learning opportunities. Teachers rated the reform efforts positively and reported a high likelihood of implementation. Using California Department of Education data, we employed Econometric analyses to estimate program effects for the district's elementary school from 1999 to 2002. A difference-of-differences model estimated 10 of 16 positive and significant effects on grades 2 to 5 SAT9 scaled score mathematics achievement, ranging from .2σ to .7σ. The same model applied to reading scores showed 12 of 16 insignificant or negative grade-level effects. As predicted, however, second and third graders in 2002—those students who had 3 and 4 years of exposure to the program exclusively—experienced only positive (4 of 4) and mostly significant (3 of 4) reading and mathematics effects. Results may guide district administrators implementing standards or comprehensive school reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational reformers increasingly seek to manipulate policies regarding assessment, curriculum, and professional development in order to improve instruction. They assume that manipulating these elements of instructional policy will change teachers' practice, which will then improve student performance. We formalize these ideas into a rudimentary model of the relations among instructional policy, teaching, and learning. We propose that successful instructional policies are themselves instructional in nature: because teachers figure as a key connection between policy and practice, their opportunities to learn about and from policy are a crucial influence both on their practice and, at least indirectly, on student achievement. Using data from a 1994 survey of California elementary school teachers and 1994 student California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) scores, we examine the influence of assessment, curriculum, and professional development on teacher practice and student achievement. Our results bear out the usefulness of the model: under circumstances that we identify, policy can affect practice, and both can affect student performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the experience of a mathematics teacher who taught second grade students at Park School in Mill Valley, California. How she created a structure for classroom learning; Usage of homework as a medium to inform parents about their children's mathematics learning; Tactics that support learning.

Describes two experienced upper-elementary teachers, Joe Scott and Karen Hill, and their effort to implement elements of educational reform in teaching mathematics in California. Includes the strengths and weaknesses of teacher's attentiveness to learners' needs; Views of mathematics reform; Elements of reform implemented by Hill and Scott; Sources of teachers' learning.