NCTM's agenda for action and standards

Mathematics

Over time, new generations of students come equipped with unique and different background knowledge. In the 1980s, NCTM, or the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, launched a new Agenda for Action. American students had moved from a largely agricultural-based society to one that was focused on science, technology, and information. NCTM provides the blueprints from which mathematic curriculum is built across the country. In order to meet the needs of a changing society, they felt the urgent need to update the mathematic standards to fit the students of the 80s, and they continue to update the standards for today's students (Krulic, 2003, p. 21).

Many updates were made to the Agenda for Action in 2000. In the 1989 version, four standards, called process standards, were presented and reached across all grade levels, k-12: problem solving, communications, reasoning, and connections. When updated in 2000, the fifth standard of representation was added. This new process standard suggested that students now learn in reasoning skills, strategies for solving problems, understand relationships between different types of mathematics, as well as the relationships between mathematics and the other disciplines (Krulic, 2003, p. 22). Several changes were made. Communication skills, which had been long overlooked when teaching mathematics, was now being emphasized through writing, listening, and other communication about math (Krulic, 2003, p. 22-23). Connections were also being focused on, looking at the mathematical discipline as a single unit rather than numerous smaller individual parts (Krulic, 2003, p. 23). The process standards suggested a large shift in grade placement and content levels (Krulic, 2003, p. 24).

In order to speak specifically to grade level, the process standards were broken down by grade spans. The middle school grades were represented by standards 5-8, as these are commonly the grades that represent middle school. This presentation of process standards specifically presented by grade levels were called content standards. These were updated in 2000 as well. The 1989 content standards included the following ten standards: number and number relationships, number systems and theory, computation and estimation, patterns and functions, algebra, statistics, probability, geometry, and measurement. In 2000, those ten standards continued to be fully represented, however they were pared down to five areas: number and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis (Krulic, 2003, p. 21). Major changes occurred in several areas. One major change was a shift in the attitude and expectations for computations. Though computations were still taught, they were no longer taught until mastery in lieu of higher level concepts, as had been done in the past (Krulic, 2003, p. 25). Arguably the largest change was the degree to which algebra was being included (krulic, 2003, p. 26). The updates in 2000 hoped to provide students a new way of thinking about mathematics, rather than simply focusing on rote memorization and answers.