The National Science Foundation has funded 22 Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation. Despite the remarkable allocation of resources to this effort, it has proven exceptionally difficult to demonstrate the effectiveness of collaborative reform. In large part, this has resulted because of the difficulty of defining and measuring reform. The Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) was designed by the Evaluation Facilitation Group of the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT). It is a 25‐item classroom observation protocol that is (a) standards based, (b) inquiry oriented, and (c) student centered. This instrument has provided the definition for reform and the basis for evaluation of the ACEPT collaborative. The data upon which this report is based were collected over a period of more than 2 years from 153 public school, college, and university mathematics and science classrooms. A trained team of observers consisting of two faculty members and seven graduate students was able to achieve exceptionally high levels of interrater reliability. Internal consistency, as estimated by Cronbach's alpha, was also remarkably high. Correlation coefficients ranging from 0.88 to 0.97 between RTOP scores for classrooms, and mean normalized gain scores for students in those classrooms on achievement measures demonstrate that reform, as defined by ACEPT and measured by the RTOP, has been effective.

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Though national standards emphasize the importance of connections between math and science, few empirical studies exist to support the notion that student achievement increases from such integration. This paper examines an eighth‐grade science class that integrated mathematics into science through the use of technology. In a setting of action research, the effects of such integration were examined. This paper reports that integrating mathematics into the science class positively affected students' achievement in their math class and describes the circumstances under which the integration occurred.

The study sought to trace the emergence and differentiation of partitioning as a process that leads young children to construct ideas of rational numbers. The method involved clinical sessions with children as they manipulated materials while solving tasks designed to reveal partitioning processes. The data analysis led to a theory concerning the emergence of partitioning capability, and conceptual structures that undergird the capability were identified. A five-level theory of the development of the partitioning process is presented.