Acknowledgments

For over ten years the Mathematical Sciences Education Board (MSEB) has worked to support the improvement of mathematics education. The work of the Board becomes visible largely through publications, beginning with Everybody Counts (1989) and Reshaping School Mathematics (1990). High School Mathematics at Work builds on this prior work. Like Measuring Up (1992), it contains student tasks; like Mathematical Preparation of the Technical Work Force (1995), it highlights the mathematics needed for careers.

     High School Mathematics at Work was developed through the efforts of more people than can be named individually here. We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and thank both Robert Schwartz for his special encouragement with this project when he was Director of their Education Programs, as well as Janet Kroll for her continuing interest and support as our program officer.

     The project was launched as a 12th grade sequel to Measuring Up through the initiative of Linda P. Rosen. The MSEB first envisioned that this sequel would illuminate some features of high quality high school mathematics teaching and learning through standards-based assessment tasks. The growing interest in school-to-work issues, however, led to our giving this theme major prominence. With this new focus, Lynn Arthur Steen and Susan Forman designed the project, secured funding, collected mathematical examples, commissioned essays, and worked with the Task Force, first as members of the MSEB staff and later as consultants. We also thank Daniel Goroff for his leadership during a period of staff transition.

     Examples of mathematical tasks were solicited over a period of two years from a wide variety of sources, as described in Appendix A. From the hundreds of examples that were contributed, the Task Force selected about two dozen for inclusion, wrote first drafts of those mathematical examples, and identified essay topics and authors. The resulting collection of examples and essays was molded into its current form by Bradford Findell, serving as editor, under the guidance of Glenda Lappan, Alan Schoenfeld, and Harvey Keynes, with the assistance of Cathy Kessel, and with substantial input from Deborah Ball, Sadie Bragg, Gail Burrill, Shari Coston, Shelley Ferguson, Melvin George, Rick Jennings, Jim Leitzel, Tony Martinez, Pamela Matthews, Patrick McCray, and Jack Price.

     Of course, no project of this size could ever come to completion without the contributions of support staff. Thanks especially to Sharon O'Donnell for her help collecting the essays and examples and to Catherine Bell and Doug Sprunger for their help with the review process. We must also thank Sally Stanfield, Linda Humphrey, and the staff at the National Academy Press for their support and patience with the complex evolution of this project.

Hyman Bass, Chairman

Mathematical Sciences Education Board

References

National Research Council. (1989).

Everybody counts: A report to the nation on the future of mathematics education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. (1990).

Reshaping school mathematics: A philosophy and framework for curriculum. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. (1993).

Measuring up: Prototypes for mathematics assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. (1995).

Mathematical preparation of the technical work force. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Additional thanks for the many efforts and suggestions offered by the following people:

Jennifer Bemis, John Bishop, Judy Estep, Jim Fey, Carol Findell, Kent Findell, Irene Gable, Jim Gates, Mary Hornyak, Ramona Irvin, Jay Labov, Patrice Legro, Diane Mann, Bob Naismith, Harold Pratt, Kirsten Sampson, Harold Shoen, Kevin Sullivan, Jan Tuomi, Phil Wagreich, Tina Winters, and Judi Zawojewski.