The Redundancy of Mathematics Instruction in U.S. Elementary and Middle Schools

International comparisons have highlighted that the U.S. mathematics curriculum, both in terms of curriculum influences (e.g., textbooks, standards) and actual instruction, is broad and shallow. Standards-based reform is explicitly designed to improve coherence and reduce redundancy across grades. This article evaluates the redundancy of mathematics instruction after the early years of standards-based reform, using survey data from over 7,000 teachers. Instruction for teachers in consecutive grades in the same school is compared, and the redundancy of instruction is compared with the redundancy of state standards. Results indicate continuing problems of instructional redundancy, with upwards of 60% of instructional time at each grade on content taught in previous grades. Topics are continually introduced to the curriculum but leave more slowly; middle school instruction is broader and more redundant than elementary school instruction. State standards are also highly redundant, though there is no apparent relationship between the redundancy of state standards and the redundancy of instruction.