Prioritizing Math Standards

By Michele Carney @ Boise State University

Several national level documents focused on educational recovery from COVID impacts recommend ‘prioritizing’ math standards to allow more time for ‘just-in-time’ teaching to address unfinished learning (e.g., see Strategy #3). The following brief presents a few important considerations for educators and/or districts depending on their approach to this work.

What is the target of prioritization? 

Eliminating standards 

The elimination of particular standards from a grade-level or course is a common target/approach to prioritizing standards. This often involves teachers determining which standards are most critical for students to learn at a particular grade level. Oftentimes data analysis and geometry standards become the target of elimination (see below why this might be problematic). This is perhaps the least time-and-expertise-intensive approach to prioritizing standards. However, the Idaho standards are carefully designed and sequenced to build upon each other at each grade level. When standards are eliminated at a particular grade-level, it can significantly impact future mathematics instruction and learning. If you are planning to use this approach, it is important to consider how you will address the issues that will arise in future years. It is important to note that the impact of eliminating standards differs significantly depending on the grade level. For example, there are several high school standards it may make sense to eliminate without causing future issues, whereas at the K-8 level, the impact may be felt for several years.

Mapping standards 

Mapping standards often involves identifying particular standards as priority and others as supporting (e.g., SBAC Blueprint). The bulk of instructional time is devoted to priority standards, while supporting standards are often used as the context to address priority standards (e.g., data analysis being used as a context to address number and operation standards). If educators and/or districts select this approach of prioritizing standards, there are excellent resources available that should be used as a basis for this approach (e.g., Priority Instructional Content). In addition, excellent locally-developed resources are available at the high school level that include mapping of standards to common high school curricular resources (see Boise State Regional Math Center, Unfinished Learning Resources for High School). The mapping standards approach is more time-intensive than the eliminating standards approach, but also reduces some of the long term impacts of removing particular standards from the K-8 curriculum. The actual mapping of standards should be pulled from high-quality resources, such as the Priority Instructional Content document linked above. However, the work of mapping those priorities to curricular materials can be time-consuming for teachers and external expertise may be needed to support this work.

Bounding standards 

Bounding standards involves teachers engaging in clearly identifying the lower and upper bounds of standards at a particular grade level or course. In other words, teachers identify what they are and are NOT responsible for teaching.  Teachers and textbooks often go well beyond what is ‘required’ at a grade level (I would estimate that 20-50% of instructional time is devoted to out-of-grade level topics). Recognizing the boundaries of standards can help teachers prioritize what students need to be proficient with at a grade level or at the end of a course. This can potentially reduce the amount of content that needs to be ‘eliminated’ while also avoiding unnecessary repeated instruction. It is important to note that recognizing the upper bound does not mean a teacher cannot go beyond this upper bound if that is appropriate for particular students (i.e., ensuring the needs of high-achieving students are met). However, pressing for depth of understanding within grade level content is another excellent approach to consider when differentiating instruction for high achieving students. The bounding of standards is a particularly time-intensive task and may require additional external expertise (the Arizona progressions documents are an excellent resource to support this work if done internally). However, this  may be the best approach to prioritization if your focus is on recovering forwarding, that is, identifying strategies and resources that address short-term issues that arose from COVID, but have the potential to also address long-standing educational goals. 

Special Consideration for Data Analysis Standards

You may notice in many resources that the data analysis strand in grades K-8 is minimized or eliminated in particular documents (e.g., SBAC blueprint or the Priority Instructional Content documents linked above). It is important to recognize that there are ongoing national and state level mathematics education groups which  recognize the importance of K-12 data education and literacy and advocate significantly increasing their focus in high school (e.g., https://freakonomics.com/podcast/math-curriculum/). Whether a district decides to eliminate, prioritize, or bound standards, it should take into consideration this increasing focus on data education in schools and the impact of those decisions.

The Math Education Collective (MEC) at Boise State University is focused on providing high-quality mathematics education resources and services in partnership with Idaho’s school districts.