ABSTRACT
The purpose of our summative evaluation was to document the impact on student achievement of using the standards-based middle-school mathematics curriculum Mathematics in Context, to compare that achievement with the performance of students who studied conventional curricula, and to examine factors that contributed to student opportunity to learn with understanding. The challenges we faced in conducting this comparative longitudinal research in the reality of school life seemed daunting at times. As numerous as these challenges were, however, we were able to follow many students longitudinally, collect rich observation and achievement data, and record teacher accounts of what transpired in study classes. In this chapter we comment on some of the things we learned from conducting the evaluation, and then reflect on the implications of our experiences for future summative evaluations of standards-based curricula.
