In 2006, a National Mathematics Advisory Panel was created through an executive order due to the deplorable state of mathematics in the United States. The panel was given two years to produce recommendations from the “best available scientific evidence,” on the “critical skills and skill progressions for students to acquire competence in algebra and readiness for higher levels of mathematics.” In March 2008 the U.S. Department of Education released the “Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.”2 The Final Report was not used to inform the draft math standards.

The draft grade level expectations do not align with the Report’s nationally recommended benchmarks for critical foundations. For example, the draft Colorado standards call for surface area and volume in 7th grade but the national Report places those in 6th grade. Slope of a line is a national benchmark for 7th grade but it is in 8th grade in the Colorado draft standards. Nor do the standards align well or prepare students for the ACT which all students take in 10th grade. The ACT requires rapid, accurate calculations, not constructed responses.

The Panel used the term “proficiency” to mean “that students should understand key concepts, achieve automaticity as appropriate . . ., develop flexible, accurate, and automatic execution of the standard algorithms, and use these competencies to solve problems.” The report notes that explicit instruction – clear models for solving a problem type with an array of examples – followed by extensive practice has consistent positive effects on performance for the lowest third of a typical class. The draft standards note that the prepared graduate competencies include being fluent with algorithms. But in an apparent nod to the constructionists, algorithms follow student-generated strategies for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade standards, not as an expectation but as evidence of outcome.

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