A Statistical Analysis of the Effectiveness of Mathematics Standards Reform in Texas

Abstract

The Texas Education Agency adopted a revised set of mathematics Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills in April 2012 in order to be more aligned with the Common Core State Standards. These standards were fully implemented for the 2014-2015 school year in Kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms. This project aimed to determine if these new standards have made an impact on Texas students’ achievement in sixth and seventh grade mathematics. Using scores from the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) from the year prior to implementation (2014) and the most recent spring administration (2019) a linear regression analysis was conducted to determine how the scores have been impacted since the new standards have gone into effect. In this study, sixth and seventh grade STAAR scores served as the data set for a linear regression model. The data analysis shows that the state-wide average score has had a statistically significant increase after the new standards became the focus of mathematics education; additionally, there has been significant change in average scores for most of the examined subpopulations.