The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) do not make any promises about the teaching practices that should be used to support students' enactment of the standards. Thus, equity gets framed as achievable through making the standards a goal for all students. We know from research on past reform efforts that standards without explicit (or companion) teaching practices, and teaching practices without explicit attention to equity, will inevitably result in the failure of the standards to achieve goals for students. This commentary provides a framework for future research that hypothesizes research-based equitable mathematics teaching practices in support of the CCSSM's Standards for Mathematical Practice, connecting research, policy, and practice in order to realize the equity potential of the CCSSM.

More than 60% of the nation's 14 million community college students are required to complete at least one developmental mathematics class before enrolling in college-credit courses; however, 80% of them do not successfully complete any collegelevel mathematics course within 3 years. To address this problem, the Community College Pathways initiative was launched in 2009. A core element is the Pathways Faculty Support Program, professional development aimed at supporting faculty to develop knowledge, beliefs, skills, and practices for teaching Pathways courses. In fall 2014, a redesign of the program used improvement science methods to design an infrastructure for responsive, flexible professional development that is sensitive to varying and changing conditions, with mechanisms for identifying, designing, and testing ideas for improvement. Specifically, our team employed a user-centered design process that foregrounds the needs and work processes of Pathways faculty and a measurement system that drives the continuous improvement of the program.

With the unveiling in the United States of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics that value inquiry, cross-curricular connections, and the use of technology in instruction, school librarians may be best positioned to collaborate with mathematics teachers to instill these practices into mathematics teaching and learning. However, the mathematics curriculum is often perceived as challenging or even impossible for librarians to connect with. Consequently, such collaboration is often not pursued by either party. This paper examines the factors that shape or hinder collaboration between school librarians and mathematics teachers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with mathematics teachers, school librarians, and school leaders in four middle schools in a highly resourced school district in the mid Atlantic region of the United States. We find several factors that influence the nature and opportunities for collaboration, including: perception; comfort with technology; institutional structures; testing pressure; and knowledge about mathematics teaching and learning. Our analysis reveals pivotal transformations that need to take place in order to strengthen the collaborative relationship between these two domains: (1) changes in the perceptions mathematics teachers and school librarians have of each other, and of various aspects of technology integration in mathematics teaching and learning and collaborative relationships; (2) enhanced structural support at the school district level; and (3) enhanced structural support at the school level to support collaboration. By examining the connections and contexts of these emerging themes from our study, we reveal the impact that school librarians can have in mathematics learning in middle schools.

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Background/Context This opening article, like the other articles in this special issue, is situated in scholarship that attempts to understand the racialized nature of mathematics education in the United States and to examine the racial identities of students and teachers in the context of school mathematics. It is designed to respond to the current (mathematics) education policy context that largely ignores teachers’ experiential and cultural knowledge while stressing the importance of teachers’ content knowledge and academic achievement. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article presents theoretical perspectives and research questions concerning the knowledge and other resources that African American teachers bring to teaching mathematics, perspectives and questions that are taken up in the five subsequent articles in this special issue. Setting The cases developed in this special issue were developed from observations of the introductory algebra classes of, and interviews with, two well-respected African American teachers in one neighborhood high school in a large urban school district that serves a predominantly African American student population. Research Design This opening article frames two case study papers and two analysis papers that report on findings from a large-scale qualitative study of the racialized identity and instructional approaches of two of the six African American mathematics teachers studied in the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning Algebra 1 Case Studies Project. Conclusions/Recommendations Together with the other articles in this special issue, this work contributes to the development of more sophisticated attempts to integrate understandings of race into the work of the mathematics education community. It challenges taken-for-granted notions of the knowledge base and resources needed to be an effective mathematics teacher of African American students in underresourced large urban schools.