Heather C. Hill
Jerome T. Murphy Professor in Education - Harvard University
Efforts to improve K-8 mathematics instruction have been a consistent feature of the education policy landscape for the past three decades, from the revised state mathematics standards of the 1990s to the Common Core educational standards enacted in 2010. These reforms ask teachers to forgo presenting mathematics as a set of facts and procedures and instead help students to make sense of mathematics conceptually, and also to engage students in mathematical practices such as explanation, argumentation, and modeling.
In response to these policies, governments at all levels have implemented supports intended to help teachers achieve standards-aligned instruction. These include new, standards-aligned curriculum materials as well as professional learning meant to improve teachers’ mathematical knowledge and teaching skills. A dense network of nonprofits that design and deliver these new materials and professional development have aided these government supports.
But have these efforts to bring standards-aligned instruction to mathematics classrooms succeeded? Three decades into these reforms, it is time to take stock. Over the past few years, colleagues and I have collected evidence on not only U.S. mathematics instruction, but also on the key pathways through which that instruction was expected to improve, looking for changes in teachers’ mathematical knowledge and to the curriculum materials they use.
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