Mathematics Curriculum Effects on Student Achievement in California

Abstract

We estimate relative achievement effects of the four most commonly adopted elementary mathematics textbooks in the fall of 2008 and fall of 2009 in California. Our findings indicate that one book, Houghton Mifflin's California Math, is more effective than the other three, raising student achievement by 0.05 to 0.08 student-level standard deviations of the Grade 3 state standardized math test. We also estimate positive effects of California Math relative to the other textbooks in higher elementary grades. The differential effect of California Math is educationally meaningful, particularly given that it is a schoolwide effect and can be had at what is effectively zero marginal cost.

Boosting school readiness: Should preschool teachers target skills or the whole child?

“…Curricula set goals for the knowledge and skills that children should acquire in an educational setting, and support educators’ plans for providing the day-to-day learning experiences to cultivate those skills with items such as such as daily lesson plans, materials, and other pedagogical tools (Gormley 2007, Ritchie and Willer 2008). While social scientists have recently begun to consider the effects of curricula in other settings (Jackson and Makarin 2016, Koedel et al 2017), there exists little or no evidence about which early childhood curricula are best for whom.…”

Curriculum Reform in The Common Core Era: Evaluating Elementary Math Textbooks Across Six U.S. States

“…A handful of non-experimental studies have identified moderate effects of textbooks on student achievement gains (upwards of 0.14 SD). Koedel and co-authors used matching methods and school-level aggregate achievement to measure textbook efficacy in three states: California, Florida, and Indiana (Bhatt & Koedel, 2012;Bhatt, Koedel & Lehmann, 2013;Koedel et al, 2017). Given the large number of texts observed in California and Florida, the analysts used a two-step process in these states.…”

“…In California, state law requires that schools report on textbook adoptions each year as part of school accountability report cards (Hutt & Polikoff, 2018). Our raw data came from reports hosted on the California Department of Education website, in which schools reported the title of textbooks they adopted by subject and grade (see Koedel et al, 2017, for additional information). Those data allowed us to identify the math textbook adopted for 87 percent of elementary schools in our sampling frame (n = 5,107 of 5,841 schools; see Table 1).…”

“…In the four remaining states (Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington), we surveyed schools in the winter of the 2016/2017 school year in order to identify the textbooks they adopted that year and the two years prior. We took a multi-step process to select schools in order to account for the fact that schools within most districts share a single text (see Koedel et al, 2017, and our own data). If we took a one-step process to sample schools proportional to their enrollments, we would have ended up with a large number of urban schools using a small number of texts.…”

“…Despite the potential value to districts and schools, the research literature on the efficacy of alternative textbooks or curricula is sparse. We are aware of one multitextbook randomized trial (Agodini et al, 2010), two randomized trials assessing the effectiveness of a single textbook (Eddy et al, 2014;Jaciw et al, 2016), and a handful of non-experimental studies that rely on matching techniques to estimate textbook effects (Bhatt & Koedel, 2012;Bhatt, Koedel, & Lehmann, 2013;Koedel et al, 2017). However, most of the textbook editions or curricula materials in common use today have never been subjected to a rigorous test of efficacy.…”