Cost/Benefit
Question:
All things being equal, does an NSF
sponsored standards-based mathematics curriculum, such as the
Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), have a greater positive impact
on student achievement than a “traditional” pre-standards program to such a
degree as to justify the time, energy and cost of implementing it?
Conclusions:
Student Achievement. After nearly
five years of collecting student achievement data in the Philadelphia public
schools related to the Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), the results boil down to this:
When
IMP students were taught by teachers who had been properly trained, IMP
students consistently outperformed similar students who were taught using a pre-NCTM
standards curriculum and subjected to lecture style instruction. The superior
performance results of IMP were found using a variety of measures and across
different student ability levels, when measures for achievement are controlled
for 8th grade cohort effects.
That is, lower ability IMP students did better than their lower ability
counterparts while higher ability IMP students did better than their higher
ability counterparts.
Cost: The cost to properly implement IMP is approximately 21,000 dollars per teacher over four years. This includes new textbooks, a classroom set of graphics calculators, classroom materials, an overhead projector and LCD panel, 240 hours of training per teacher, 50 hours of classroom mentoring, and on-going administrative support.