Implementing the “Assessment Standards for School Mathematics”: Some Practical Possibilities for Alternative Assessment

Imagine that you are a teacher in a secondary mathematics classroom, working hard to implement the precepts of the Standards documents {National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 1989, 1991, 1995). In particular, you are focusing on getting your students to (1) make connections between mathematics and the real world, (2) reason and communicate mathematically, and (3) value mathematics. A colleague with whom you often share classroom concerns and successes stops by during a rare quiet moment and, in the course of conversation about your most recent classroom endeavors, asks, “How is it going?” How might you reply?