Rick Anderson to Give March 5th Talk: Abstract follows

Mathematics educators have an ongoing concern with students' achievement and participation in mathematics courses. It is recognized that all groups of students do not have comparable access to mathematical opportunities or success in mathematics courses. Students in rural areas and small towns approximately one-fifth of US school-aged children are one such group whose mathematics achievement and participation have been tracked in recent decades. In this talk I will summarize the mathematics achievement of rural high school students in the US as it compares to students in non-rural areas. Then I will present results of rural high school students' mathematics course-taking drawn from data collected for the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript Study. I will conclude with a discussion of the implications of the results for mathematics teachers in rural areas.