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This study evaluated the effects of a mathematics software program, the Building Blocks software suite, on young children's mathematics performance. Participants included 247 Kindergartners from 37 classrooms in 9 schools located in low-income communities. Children within classrooms were randomly assigned to receive 21 weeks of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in mathematics with Building Blocks or in literacy with Earobics Step 1. Children in the Building Blocks condition evidenced higher posttest scores on tests of numeracy and Applied Problems after controlling for beginning-of-year numeracy scores and classroom nesting. These findings, together with a review of earlier CAI, provide guidance for future work on CAI aiming to improve mathematics performance of children from low-income backgrounds.

In January of 1969 twelve terminal for computer-assisted instruction (CAI), each consisting of a key set and a television display (fig. 1), were installed in a small room in Washington Elementary School, Champaign, Illinois, as part of the Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation (PLATO) project at the University of lllinoi, Urbana. We wi hed to learn how the computer could but be used to supplement the arithmetic classroom. Therefore, we experimented widely in the types of lesson we wrote. Moreover, we involved children of all age and ability group available in the K-6 school, including the educable mentally handicapped (EMH).

In January 2006 the Billings (Montana) Public Schools adopted a computer–assisted instruction (CAI) intervention aimed at helping students recover credits that they had attempted but had not attained. I volunteered to teach the algebra component in my high school. Through the following seven semesters, I came to better understand the role of an effective teacher in a credit–recovery program that relies so heavily on CAI. This article is an effort to describe this effectiveness and the nature of success and failure in CAI interventions.

During the 1967/68 school year the Stanford project in computer-assisted instruction in elementa ry mathematics was expanded to include schools in Iowa, Kentucky, and Mississippi, in addition to schools in California. As many as 78 students were able to take arithmetic lessons simultaneously on instructional terminals operated by phone line from the computer of Stanford's Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences. The instructional terminals (teletype machines with modified keyboards) were located one to a classroom in some schools and grouped in a single room in other schools. Before describing the workshop held at Stanford for Mississippi teachers, a brief description of the drill-and-practice program in arithmetic skills and concepts will be given.

There is agreement between mathematicians and educators that future and inservice teachers need a good background in mathematics subject matter. Toward this end many colleges, universities, and school systems have developed content courses for elementary teachers that are very similar to the recommendations of the Committee on Undergraduate Program in Mathematics of the Mathematical Association of America.

Although many perspicacious mathematics teachers are interested in learning more about computer-assisted in struction (CAI), the high costs and relative inaccessibility of these sophisticated systems have afforded little opportunity for firsthand experience with this technological advance which will surely have far-reaching effects on education. Recently, however, a program has been developed which will “convert” a small general-purpose computer, available at many schools and campuses, to an electronic teaching machine capable of teaching skill s with facts of both multiplication and addition. Furthermore, the author wishes to announce th at this program is available to readers of The Arithmetic Teacher. It is hoped that the dissemination of this program will lead to improved pupil achievement, increa ed teacher and parental interest in innovation, and the enhancement of research opportunities in other places as it has at Indiana State University.

The implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) has the potential to move forward key features of standards-based reforms in mathematics that have been promoted in the United States for more than 2 decades (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989, 2000; National Science Foundation, 1996). We believe that this is an especially opportune time to purposely focus on improving the mathematics education of students who have historically been denied access to a high-quality and rigorous mathematics education in the United States, specifically low-income students and students of color (e.g., Kitchen, DePree, Celedón-Pattichis, & Brinkerhoff, 2007; Leonard & Martin, 2013). We discuss a challenge to realizing standards-based reforms in mathematics in the United States: computer-based interventions in mathematics classrooms.

In our response to Clements and Sarama (2017), we address the 5 issues that they identify as criticisms of our Research Commentary (Kitchen & Berk, 2016). As in our original commentary, we highlight concerns we have regarding the delivery of CAI programs and potential misuses of CAI, particularly at Title I schools that largely serve historically marginalized student groups. Specifically, we concentrate on how CAI may contribute to underserved students generally experiencing mathematics in impoverished ways that do not align with reforms being advocated by the mathematics education community. We also argue that Clements and Sarama appear to dismiss or ignore our central argument that some CAI programs are not designed or are not being used to support the development of students' mathematical reasoning and fluency.