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What Middle Grades Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do
Southern Regional Education Board
Visits in the last several years to well over 100 middle grades schools indicate that the schools' goals and priorities often are unclear to teachers, students and the community. States have set content and performance standards in each core academic area, but these standards need to be translated into daily work in the classroom. Identifying readiness indicators for Algebra I is one way to translate middle school mathematics content standards for the classroom. It is also a way to guide high schools in planning and implementing catch-up courses in mathematics for incoming ninth-graders. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) worked with a panel of teachers and experts from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to develop Algebra I readiness indicators.
Based on their objective judgments, the panel members — using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as a reference — developed definitions of the Basic, Proficient and Advanced levels of proficiency. The panel used these definitions to evaluate items on the Middle Grades Assessment —which uses publicly-released items from NAEP — and to define what students should know and be able to do to be successful in Algebra I. The SREB panel used its definitions of Basic, Proficient and Advanced to determine the proficiency level for each item in the Benchmark Proficiency Progression charts, the Learning Activities and Applications, and the Proficiency Level Illustrations in this report. The process the SREB panel used was less complex than the process NAEP uses. Therefore, the panel's determinations of the proficiency levels are not to be construed as equivalent to the NAEP process.
This report is not intended to answer all curriculum-related questions or to serve as a complete teaching plan. Instead it is designed to assist curriculum planners, principals and teachers. It is intended to help them develop frameworks, course syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, assessments and staff development activities that will enable students to meet the demands of the high-level mathematics courses they will encounter after leaving the middle grades. This report is a tool to help middle grades and high schools set goals and priorities for mathematics that will get all students ready for Algebra I and help them complete it successfully by the end of ninth grade.
Download Getting Students Ready for Algebra I.
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