Creation and Dissemination of Upper-elementary Mathematics Assessment Modules

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The Learning Mathematics for Teaching (LMT) project and the Educational Testing Services (ETS) have formed a partnership to construct, pilot test, re-design, validate, and disseminate five assessments of student achievement for use in upper elementary grades as growth-sensitive measures of student learning in mathematics. The assessments are in the areas of (1) number and operations, (2) pre-algebra and algebra, and (3) geometry and measurement and are based in the literature on student's cognitive growth in these mathematical domains. The instruments are aligned with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Focal Points and with existing "mathematics knowledge for teaching" (MKT) classroom observation instruments. These assessments differ from existing assessments in that the questions require more complex responses than typical multiple-choice problems. Yet, they are still machine-scoreable so they can easily be used in studies with large student samples. Additionally, these assessment instruments enable researchers to capture student growth nested within classrooms, which provides a tool that is able to identify teacher effects on learning. By comparing students of teachers without MSP "treatment" to students of teachers with MSP treatment in a quasi-experimental design, this research project examines the effects of teacher mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) growth on classroom instruction and student achievement. The project expects to find that high teacher scores on the Learning Mathematics for Teaching (LMT) measures are correlated with the size of student gains on the new assessment instruments. Additionally, this project adds to the suite of instruments available from the LMT for exploring the connection between teacher learning, teachers' MKT, their classroom instruction, and student outcomes.