A year-long effort to update Washington state’s K-12 mathematics standards will reach a major milestone at the end of this month.

On Jan. 31, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is scheduled to present a final version of revised math standards to the state Legislature. A preliminary draft of proposed revisions was released for public review and comment in early December.

In addition, OSPI is scheduling public meetings in Seattle (Jan 22), Spokane (Jan. 28) and Vancouver (Feb. 6) to report on the revised standards and seek comments and questions (see links at right).

The revision was ordered by the Legislature under a bill signed into law last May. The bill directed the State Board of Education to review and recommend changes to the state’s Essential Academic Learning Requirements and Grade Level Expectations for K-12 mathematics, while OSPI was tasked with revising the standards based on the State Board’s recommendations.

The law also directs the state superintendent to adopt revised standards "unless otherwise directed by the Legislature during the 2008 legislative session." This year’s session will conclude in mid-March.

The independent review commissioned by the State Board concluded that Washington’s math standards need to be strengthened. "If mathematics is the gateway to student success in higher education and the workplace," the report said, "Washington is getting too few of its students to and through the door." The SBE report called for:

• Setting higher expectations for Washington’s students by fortifying content and increasing rigor.
• Making clear the importance of all aspects of mathematics: mathematics content, including the standard algorithms; the conceptual understanding of the content; and the application of mathematical processes within the content.
• Identifying topics that should be taught for extended periods at each grade level and showing how topics develop over grade levels.
• Increasing the clarity, specificity, and measurability of the GLEs.
• Writing EALRs that restructure the standards document to clarify grade-level content priorities and that reflect both the conceptual and procedural sides of mathematics.
• Creating a standards document that is easily used by most people.
• Creating small, expert Standards Revision Teams for each grade band to systematically collect feedback on the revised standards.

In response to SBE’s report, OSPI hired the Charles A. Dana Center for Mathematics and Science Education, affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin, to conduct the rewrite of Washington’s math standards. The Dana Center’s preliminary report was developed based on input from a number of experts from Washington state and around the country, including teachers, mathematicians, mathematics educators, curriculum specialists, and business/community leaders.

The draft report lists up to four K-8 mathematics-content priorities and describes the set of knowledge and skills connected with those priorities. The proposal also describes what students have to know about reasoning and problem solving and about communicating their work at each grade level.

OSPI and the Dana Center are also developing course descriptions for traditional and integrated math sequences in grades 9-12, but will not make final recommendations until it has more feedback on the proposed standards for those grades.

While the standards have implications for textbooks, curricula and assessments, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson notes that the report is not intended to address those issues. Rather, she says, the revisions are centered on goals for mathematics learning.