Study: Teacher-Designed Math Curriculum Is Effective

A teacher-made math curriculum that stresses problem-solving and mixing high school students of different academic abilities in the same classes can lead to learning gains, a California study released last week suggests.

The five-year study, conducted by Jo Boaler, an associate professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, is based on data from 700 students in three unnamed schools in the San Francisco Bay area. Two of the high schools, pseudonymously named Greendale and Hilltop, were largely white suburban schools that used a traditional mathematics curriculum and that grouped students in classes according to their ability. The third, a school with a less traditional approach that Ms. Boaler named Railside, was in a poorer, urban neighborhood, and 77 percent of its students were members of minority groups.

Although the Railside 9th graders had started out behind the Greendale and Hilltop freshmen, they began outperforming their suburban counterparts within two years, according to the study. By 12th grade, the Railside students outscored the comparison group on one test by an...