As part of our multi-year evaluation for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of mathematics teaching tools aligned to the CCSS, this booklet is a synthesis of what we learned from practitioners over the course of the pilot year, 2010-11. It highlights how MDC worked in schools and includes what teachers can expect when using the FALs, points out promising practices, as well as teachers’ early impressions about MDC’s impact on their teaching and student learning.
A View from the Inside: Teachers’ Perceptions of the MDC Initiative and their Use of the Formative Assessment Lessons
Date: October 2011
Related Publications
Publication
Virtual Approaches Hold Promise for Expanding Afterschool Art Programming
Four Boys & Girls Clubs implementing high-quality art skill development classes for tweens and teens experimented with five different virtual approaches that hold promise for expanding programming. This brief describes three approaches that reach young…
Publication
Small but Mighty: Lessons from Black Teachers’ Experiences in Allegheny County
RFA studied why Black teachers were leaving their jobs more than White teachers in Allegheny County from 2014 to 2020. RFA analyses have found that the number of Black teachers in the area was consistently…
Publication
Allegheny County Teacher and Student Demographics: 2022-23 Update
This ACER brief updates RFA’s prior analyses of teacher and student race and ethnicity in Allegheny County public schools with data current through the 2022-23 school year. We found that in 2022-23, teachers of color (TOCs)…
Publication
Top 5 Insights from RFA’s Community Research Partnership: Becoming a Community-Engaged Research Organization
We at Research for Action are committed to becoming a community-engaged research institution, with the goal of having our work be grounded in principles of community empowerment, collaboration, and social change within K-12 education. We’re…
Publication
Exploring the Diversity and Supports for School District of Philadelphia English Learners as they Prepare to Transition to High School
In Philadelphia, the School District (SDP) is home to a diverse community of English Learners (ELs) hailing from various ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and languages. ELs are students identified through the WIDA English proficiency screener, marked…
Publication
Setting the Stage: Practical Ideas for Implementing High-Quality Afterschool Arts Programs
Youth benefit from involvement in the arts but youth in historically marginalized communities and under resourced communities often have fewer opportunities to engage in high-quality arts programming due to cuts in arts education that disproportionately…
Publication
Pennsylvania School Funding and School Staffing Disparities
Pennsylvania operates one of the most inequitable public school systems in the nation, with among the largest disparities in school funding, educational opportunities, and student achievement. In this brief, RFA examines the relationship between school…
Publication
State Funding to Support Out-of-School Time Programming in Pennsylvania
Out-of-school-time (OST) refers to programs that offer students activities after school and/or during the summer. Despite evidence of significant benefits and a clear demand from families, Pennsylvania has no dedicated state funding to provide OST…
Publication
“Worn & Weary” Black Teachers’ Storied Experiences and Recommendations around their Attrition and Retention in Philadelphia Schools
The benefits of a diverse teaching staff are well-established in research literature. Yet in Philadelphia, and many of the nation’s largest school systems, the number and share of Black teachers has been declining for at…
Publication
Changing the Finish Line: Implications of new graduation requirements in the School District of Philadelphia
PERC research is produced through collaboration between researchers from Research for Action and the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Research and Evaluation. For more information, please visit phledresearch.org. New graduation requirements, enacted in 2018…
Publication
Persistent Unequal Access to Educational Opportunity in Pennsylvania For K-12 Students
Research for Action’s Educational Opportunity Dashboard is an interactive on-line tool to synthesize data and rank all 50 states by how well they provide students access to schools that offer 14 indicators of educational opportunity…
Publication
Unequal Access to Educational Opportunity in the United States
Research for Action’s Educational Opportunity Dashboard is an interactive on-line tool to synthesize data and rank all 50 states by how well they provide students access to schools that offer 14 indicators of educational opportunity…