New Tools for Analyzing Teaching, Curriculum and Standards in Mathematics & Science. Results from Survey of Enacted Curriculum Project. Final Report.

Project funding provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation (REC98-03080), and support from the collaborative states. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is a nationwide, nonprofit organization of the public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and five extra-state jurisdictions. CCSSO seeks its members' consensus on major education issues and expresses their view to civic and professional organizations, to federal agencies, to Congress, and to the public. Through its structure of standing and special committees, the Council responds to a broad range of concerns about education and provides leadership on major education issues. The State Education Assessment Center was established by chief state school officers to improve the information base on education in the United States, especially from a state perspective. The Center works to improve the breadth, quality, and comparability of data on education, including state-by-state achievement data, instructional data, indicators of education quality, and performance assessment of teachers and students. This report summarizes the results from a two-year collaborative project that developed and tested the use of Surveys of Enacted Curriculum for analyzing mathematics and science education in the classroom. The project was carried out by the work of many people and several organizations: • CCSSO: As the lead organization, the Council of Chief State School Officers formed the study team, gained cooperation of states and support of the National Science Foundation, and managed the components of the study. CCSSO is responsible for the study products and future use and application of the materials developed in the project. • WCER: Wisconsin Center for Education Research led the design and development of the survey instruments and the alignment study. The Wisconsin Center also managed data input, editing, and analysis, and designed the reporting formats and use of software. • State Collaborative: State education representatives from the 11 state partners worked on selecting schools and districts for study participation, provided followup for data collection, assisted in survey design and analysis, and recommended approaches to reporting study results. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has completed a two-year project to develop and test Surveys of Enacted Curriculum in Mathematics and Science. This final project report describes advances in survey methods and analyses of enacted curriculum data; it highlights central findings of the research; and it presents important applications of …