This book offers an introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics tailored to the teaching and research needs of K-8 educators. Using statistics to tell a story, veteran teacher educator Robert Rosenfeld pushes readers away from simply performing a calculation to truly understanding the statistical concepts themselves. In addition to helping educators develop this statistical habit of mind, Rosenfeld also focuses on developing an understanding of the statistics in published research and on interpreting school data, which can be applied in school assessment and educational research.

Features of this must-read resource include:

Numerous exercises and activities throughout that are related specifically to the world of educators and are designed to foster conversation and small group discussion.

Connections drawn between statistics and the regular mathematics curriculum to aid teachers who do classroom-based action research.

A section covering the basic concepts of standardized tests, such as summative versus formative assessment, and standards-based versus norm-referenced tests.

Accessibly written and conversational in tone, Statistics for K-8 Eductors provides the technical foundation to help teachers make good sense of quantitative information connected to their classrooms and to their schools.

Contents

1. Shapes of Distributions 2. Percentages 3. Averages 4. Splitting a Distribution of Numbers into Equal Parts 5. Measuring Variability 6. Placement of Individuals in a Group 7. The Normal Curve 8. Correlation 9. Probability 10. Inference and Margin of Error 11. Confidence Intervals 12. Statistical Significance 13. Assessment 14. Design of Studies 15. Hypothesis Tests 16. Regression

Author Bio

Robert Rosenfeld is Co-Director for Statistics and School-Based Research at the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, University of Vermont, and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics at Nassau Community College.