On October 12, 2006, Texas Instruments (TI) provided comments to the National Math Panel (NMP) on a variety of issues related to its charter for the improvement of mathematics education. Since then, the NMP made the decision to consider technology and its role in math instruction.

TI has submitted to the Panel research and materials on this subject. TI subsequently was asked to provide additional comments and testimony on a systemic,
technology- enabled program called MathForward™. This program was described in the previous submission as the effort that TI began in the 2005-2006 school year in a single
middle school in Richardson, TX Independent School District (RISD.) This year, RISD expanded their implementation, and pilot studies were started in schools in Euclid, OH,
West Palm Beach, FL, and Dallas, TX. We summarize Math Forward’s second year results (for the 2006-7 school year) in this report. Independent evaluation research was conducted by Mara Winick (The University of Redlands) and Jeffery Lewis (Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges) using survey,
teacher math knowledge, and achievement data gathered at the beginning, middle and end of the year, and state test data from the previous year and end of this year1. A separate
team led by Walter Stroup (University of Texas – Austin) performed independent analysis of the RISD achievement data. Comparisons of state test achievement data from
2006 and 2007 showed that in three of four school districts, more MathForward students moved to the Proficient level than those in comparison groups. In RISD where regression discontinuity analysis could be applied due to the larger number of students, it confirmed the effect on students who began MathForward below proficiency in the previous year. In one district, classrooms where fidelity of implementation was low have shown reduced gains or even negative results relative to the comparison group.
Although we present new second-year results in this report, we want to emphasize that the key points TI made in its earlier comments remain valid. These are the principles we have used for over 20 years in the development of our products and programs:
• To achieve and sustain student performance improvement, we have learned that key elements of the mathematics education system need be addressed in a coherent, integrated way, and there is no “silver bullet” focused on a single system element.
• To be effective at improving student learning and achievement, technology needs to be integrated into a coherent and complete instructional program. When this is done, technology becomes an enabler to integrated instruction, curriculum and assessment, thus
resulting in increased student achievement.
TI asks that after reviewing the following research results, the NMP acknowledge that appropriate use of graphing technology can have a positive impact on student achievement. TI submitted research on the effectiveness of graphing calculators in our previous comments. We also ask the NMP to recognize our hypothesis and the early research and support deeper research efforts to continue improvement and broader
scaling of Math Forward.
The next section of this document summarizes the Math Forward program. Then, we provide an overview of the 2006-7 research results for the four participating MathForward school districts. We close with remarks on lessons and next steps for moving this program to from pilot to scale. In our original testimony, we included additional information on the MathForward program’s theoretical basis and background
on the pilot study. Full research reports on the district results have been appended. They include both quantitative and qualitative analysis.