Reform Math Students' Transition from High School to College

高中数学课程的一个重要衡量标准？毕业生的工作效率如何？在高等教育数学课程上的成功，更广泛地说，他们在获得高等教育学位方面的成功。本研究将利用两种方法来收集数据，探讨与学生有关的问题。实际的中学后准备。第一种方法是从高中开始跟踪学生，分析他们的大学成绩单。这种方法在国家数据库的开发中已被证明是成功的，例如1988年国家教育纵向研究（NELS 88）。第二种方法将从一组高等教育机构收集数据，其中50%或更多的学生从所研究的高中入学。这两种方法都将改进先前的研究，这些研究要么是，a)报告了少数学生的案例研究，通常没有对照组，b)依赖于学生志愿者的自我报告，或者c)通过报告一所大学学生的成绩来分析高中项目的影响，其中只有一小部分高中学生？美国毕业生入学。这项提议的研究将开始填补数学界的一个严重空白。美国国家科学基金会资助的课程材料是如何影响学生的。拟议的研究还将为学区和研究人员提供有关有效数据收集技术的实际和立即有用的知识。分析大学成绩单比从大学注册者那里收集汇总数据提供了更完整的数据。然而，分析学生？成绩单更昂贵，也更耗时。本研究将确定大学注册者提供的汇总数据是否来自至少占高中50%的大学子集？S毕业生得出的有效结论与分析所有毕业生随机样本的成绩单得出的结论相似。这些结果将对评估数学课程产生广泛的影响。

One important measure of a high school mathematics program?s effectiveness is their graduates? success in post-secondary math courses and more generally their success in obtaining post-secondary degrees. This study will utilize two approaches to collect data that explores questions pertaining to students? actual post-secondary preparedness. The first approach will follow students forward from high school and analyze their college transcripts. This approach has proven successful in development of national data bases such as the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS 88). The second approach will collect data from the set of Institutions of Higher Education to which 50% or more students from the studied high schools matriculate. Both approaches will improve on prior research, which has either, a) reported case studies of small numbers of students, generally without comparison groups, b) relied on self-reports by student volunteers, or c) analyzed the impact of a high school program by reporting achievement of students at a single university, to which only a small proportion of the high school?s graduates matriculate. The proposed study would begin to fill a serious gap in the mathematics community?s knowledge about how NSF sponsored curriculum materials affect students. The proposed study will also provide school districts and researchers with practical and immediately useful knowledge about valid techniques for data collection. Analyzing college transcripts provides more complete data than does collecting summary data from college registrars. However, analyzing students? transcripts is more expensive and time-consuming. This study will determine if the summary data provided by college registrars from the subset of colleges which account for at least 50% of a high school?s graduates produces valid conclusions that are similar to the conclusions produced by analyzing transcripts from a random sample of all graduates. These results will have broad impact on assessing mathematics curricula.