Can Instructional Reform in Urban Middle Schools Help Students Narrow the Mathematics Performance Gap? Some Evidence from the QUASAR Project

The mathematical performance of students attending middle schools in economically impoverished communities involved in the QUASAR project was compared to that of a sample of students attending demographically similar (i.e., disadvantaged urban) schools, as well as to the performance of a nationally representative sample of students. Tasks from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) at grade 8 were administered to approximately 600 QUASAR students on each of two occasions during the 1992–1993 school year. QUASAR students outperformed NAEP's disadvantaged urban sample in all mathematics content areas, especially on those tasks assessing conceptual understanding or problem solving and on tasks requiring students to produce their own answers rather than to choose from a set of answer options. On tasks assessing conceptual understanding or problem solving, and on tasks assessing less traditional areas of the middle grades mathematics curriculum (e.g., statistics & probability, algebra & functions), QUASAR students also did well compared to NAEP's national sample. The results of this analysis support the conclusion that QUASAR mathematics instruction, which emphasizes reasoning, problem solving and understanding, can assist middle school students from poor communities to improve their mathematical performance.