Over the past several decades, the U.S. educational system has undergone many
reform efforts that have failed to ensure equal access to knowledge, skills, and abilities
necessary for all students to succeed (Schmidt & Burroughs, 2013). Many critics of
public education have placed the blame of educational failures on the teachers who work
in the schools and classrooms. In 1996, the National Commission of Teaching and
America’s Future (1996) stated:
What teachers know and can do makes the crucial difference in what teachers can
accomplish. New courses, tests, and curriculum reforms can be important starting
points, but they are meaningless if teachers cannot use them productively.
Policies can improve schools only if the people in them are armed with the
knowledge, skills, and supports they need (p. 5).
In response to the “changing world economic order” (Medrich & Griffith, 1992,
p. vii) President George H. W. Bush and the Nation’s Governors developed a specific
goal for mathematics and science, the two subject areas “critical to successful
competition among highly technological societies” (Medrich & Griffith, 1992, p. vii).
The goal was for U.S. students to be “first in the world in science and mathematics
achievement by the year 2000” (Medrich & Griffith, 1992, p. vii). This achievement
would be measured by international assessments of student achievement in mathematics
and science. Two long-term trend assessments, the Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP), have been used to measure changes in student achievement for students in
elementary, middle, and high school in content areas such as mathematics, science, and
reading.