Improving on expectations: Preliminary results from using network-supported function-based algebra. Retrieved October 31, 2005, from http://convention2.allacademic.com/index.php?cmd=pmena_guest

This paper reports preliminary analyses comparing results on the state-administered 8 th Grade and 9 th Grade algebra Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for a treatment and a control group. The treatment group consisted of 127 students from algebra classes at a highly diverse school in central Texas taught by two relatively new teachers using a network-supported function-based algebra (NFBA) approach as integrated with the ongoing use of an existing school-wide algebra curriculum. The control group was comprised of 99 students taught by two more-senior teachers in the same school using only the school-wide algebra curriculum. The intervention consisted of implementing 20-25 class days worth of NFBA materials over an eleven-week period in the spring of 2005. Because the students were not randomly assigned to the classes, the study is a quasi-experimental design. Using a two sample paired t-Test for means, statistically significant results for the treatment group (p-value one tail = 0.000335> α = 0.05) were obtained. We can conclude the NFBA intervention was effective in improving outcomes related to learning the algebra objectives assessed on the 9 th Grade TAKS. To date, the multiple-strands based approach to curricula promoted by the National Counci