Program Evaluation- Hillary's comments

An overview of the Program

The Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP) was a four-year, problem-based mathematics curriculum for secondary-school students. Its main approach to mathematics education was designed to prepare students for the future workplace. The IMP curriculum used a more interactive approach to teaching mathematics and focus on the use of manipulatives and calculators. The program was conceived for those students who were being prepared for college to fulfil the mathematics standards developed by the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics (Reselk, 2007). The program was designed in 1989 and is currently being used in 250 high schools in 21 states in the United States. In the early stage of the program, it was funded by the California Postsecondary Education Commission and then later received funding from National Science Foundation for curriculum development, evaluation, and dissemination (Resek, 2007).

Evaluation overview

The evaluation of the Interactive Mathematics Program was done by Norman Webb at the Wisconsin Center of Educational Research (WCER) and was prepared for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) (Resek, 2007). In evaluating the program, tests were conducted at a number of IMP locations across the United States. Comparative data on student Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) performance, as well as performance on activities involving probability, statistics, quantitative reasoning, and problem solving were collected. Separate and apart from the comparative data that were collected several studies were conducted by researchers who compared IMP students against those who were not apart of the program (Resek, 2007). Students were compared based; high school grades and retention, students’ performance on standardized tests, performance comparison on other tests, comparison of attitudes, and comparison of performance after secondary schools (Resek, 2007).

Personal Feedback

The IMP seems like a good program, the extent to which it actually worked was not stated simply because they used large number of students from the IMP locations across the United States in conducting their assessment of the program. This made it difficult to get a true assessment of the actual progress of the mathematics students. There seems to be no means of tracking students’ performance in mathematics after they left high school. The feedback from evaluation of the program was not easily understood because of the numerical data and the complex explanation. The language used was not simple, as a result it made it difficult for comprehension. Feedback from the evaluation seems quite inconclusive as there were no clear indications of whether or not the program was able to achieve its objectives. From the evaluation, it would appear that the program did not produce much success. Clearer recommendations are needed for the improvement and evaluation of the program.

Despite this, I think it was a good to compare different groups to get an idea of how well students did. I like the interactive approach that they took toward the teaching of mathematics and think this is a method that I would use in my classroom.

Reference

Resek, D. (2007). Evaluation of the interactive mathematics program. Key Curriculum Press.

www.mathimp.org/research/AERA_paper.html