Carroll Community School District is a rural school district in Carroll, Iowa. The district includes 3 elementary schools and 3 secondary schools with a current enrollment of over 1,800 students in Grades Pre-K–12. The professional staff includes 119 teachers, with approximately 138 support personnel and administrators.
Ninety percent of the students are White, and the remaining student body consists of students identified as Hispanic (5%), Black (2%), or other (3%). Thirty-two percent of the students qualify for free/reduced-price lunch and 12% of the students have an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
Iowa Assessments™ is taken by all public school students, Grades 3–8 and 11, in the spring. The test covers reading, mathematics, and science. The test measures how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in the Iowa Content Standards.
At Grades 3–5, the math Iowa Assessments comprises multiple choice and open-ended items covering five domains: Number Sense and Operations, Algebraic Patterns and Connections, Data Analysis/Probability/Statistics, Geometry, and Measurement.
In Iowa, students’ test scores can be categorized into one of three levels of mastery including Level 1 (Not Proficient), Level 2 (Proficient), and Level 3 (Advanced). Students scoring at the top two levels (Proficient and Advanced) are classified as excelling on the Iowa math standards.
To determine if HMH GO Math! had an impact on learning, students’ Iowa Assessments mathematics test scores from the spring of 2013, prior to using the program, and the spring of 2014, after one year of usage, were obtained for Grades 3, 4, and 5. 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 Advanced or higher was greater in 2014, after using GO Math!, than the previous year with an average gain of over 6%.
This one-year examination of the implementation of GO Math! © 2012 at Carroll Community School District revealed that the program was associated with increased mathematics achievement.