JMAP RESEARCH DATABASES FOR EXAMVIEW

From a collection of 1,534 extant Regents mathematics examinations administered in between 1866 and 2009, every examination administered from one year in each decade was used to create a representative sample of the historical record of assessment practices in mathematics education in the public schools of New York State.  This representative sample of historical Regents mathematics examination problems contains 5,508 mathematics assessment problems associated with 204 Regents mathematics examinations administered in calendar years 1866, 1870, 1880, ..., 2000 and 2009.  The problems from these 204 examinations were transcribed and entered into Exam View databases, which were subsequently encoded with a topic for each problem, the name of the curriculum each problem was used to assess and the date and month in which each problem was administered to students.  This methodology allows reasonable inferences to be drawn about what topics were assessed within different curriculums, when specific topics were assessed in different curricula, and how mathematics assessment practices changed over a span of 14 decades.  Quick reference can also be made to the digital images of the original source documents, which are available through JMAP.

The database created from the research sample has been organized and analyzed using three perspectives:  1) the first view is organized chronologically, and presents the 5,508 problems in the research sample using the chronological order in which the problems were administered to schoolchildren in the public schools of New York; 2) the second view organizes the same problems around curricula, and shows the various topics that were assessed in each curricula; and 3) the third view organizes the problems by topics, and shows when various mathematical topics were observed in the research sample and the curricula with which each topic was associated.    Collectively, these three appendices represent primary source documents containing slightly different illuminations of 144 years of mathematics assessment practices in the public schools of New York. 

This research sample was created as part of a dissertation in urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the taxonomy developed for classifying and sorting 144 years of Regents mathematics problems is different than the taxonomy used elsewhere in JMAP for organizing Regents problems relating to the current curricula.  Educational researchers and others are welcome to use and modify the research sample with proper attributions.   Exam View software is necessary to open the databanks.   PDF versions are also available.