Improving Students' Mathematical Proficiency through Formative Assessment: Responding to an Urgent Need in the Common Core Era

The overarching goal of this RAPID project is to contribute to the national goal of improving students’ mathematical proficiency by providing much-needed information and guidance to mathematics education practitioners and scholars to support a sharpened focus on formative assessment.

We will (a) conduct and in-depth analysis of the responses of mathematics teacher educators and professional development specialists to a recent survey that probed their practices and beliefs related to FA and its intertwined relationship with promising mathematics instructional frameworks, approaches and practices (b) support collaborative work among mathematics teacher educators and professional development specialists to elaborate effective ways to focus on FA in the preparation and continuing education of teachers of mathematics, and (c) produce a set of design features and principles, along with associated activities, intended to undergird creating and sustaining an approach to mathematics teacher professional development that both attends to critically important instructional practices of FA and links to other promising mathematics instructional frameworks, approaches and practices.