Tewksbury Public School District is a suburban district in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, with 5 elementary schools and 2 secondary schools. The district has a current enrollment of over 3,800 students in Grades Pre-K–12. The professional staff includes 248 teachers, with approximately 184 support personnel and administrators.
Tewksbury Public School is eligible for Title I assistance. Ninety-two percent of the students are White and the remaining student body consists of students identified as Asian (3%), Hispanic (2%), or other (3%). Ten percent of the students are eligible for free/reduced lunch and 17% have an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) is a test taken by all public school students in the spring. The test covers subjects such as ELA, mathematics, science, and history. The test measures performance based on the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework Learning Standards.
At Grades 3–5, the math MCAS comprises multiple choice, short-answer, and open response items covering four domains equally distributed across the tests: Geometry, Measurements and data, Number and Operations in Base Ten and Fractions, and Algebraic Thinking.
In Massachusetts, students’ test scores can be categorized into one of four levels of mastery: Level 1: Advanced, Level 2: Proficient, Level 3: Needs Improvement, and Level 4: Warning. Students scoring at Advanced and Proficient are said to have mastered the Massachusetts Learning Standards.
To determine if HMH GO Math! had an impact on learning, student MCAS mathematics test scores from the spring of 2011, prior to using the program, and the spring of 2012, after one year of usage, were obtained for Grades 3 and 4. These findings are presented in Figure 1.
The comparison of achievement scores revealed that at all grade levels examined, the percentage of students scoring at Proficient or higher was greater in 2013, after using GO Math!, than the previous year with an average gain of over 15%.
This one-year examination of the implementation of GO Math! © 2012 at Tewksbury Public School District revealed that the program was associated with increased mathematics achievement.