ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on 3 years of mathematics reform that took place in 4 high-poverty minority schools in a large, demographically mixed public school system in the South. Comparisons were made with 2 demographically similar sets of schools on project-constructed interviews, items taken from the Third International Math/Science Study data set, and Stanford Achievement Test scores. The project and its results are discussed in relation to Schoenfeld's ideas about the criteria for equitable and successful mathematics reform. The Maysville Mathematics Initiative (MMI) began in 1998 when the Mobile Area Education Foundation, a not-for-profit, community-based organization, began working in the Maysville Community in Mobile, Alabama. The MMI is based on research emphasizing teacher quality as the most important factor in student achievement, as well as on the assumption that the school is the essential element for sustainable change. The Maysville students performed better than the control students on two items within this category.
