State Mathematics Standards: An Appraisal of Math Standards in 46 States, the District of Columbia, and Japan.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the fourth of these studies, focusing on state standards for mathematics. For this evaluation of mathematics standards, researchers developed nine criteria under the four areas of: clarity, content, reason, and negative qualities. These criteria were applied to the standards documents of 46 states and the District of Columbia, and standards for Japan were reviewed for comparison purposes. The remaining four states either had no standards or did not make current drafts available. Only three states received a grade of "A," and only nine received a grade of "B." More than half received either a "D" or an "F." The principal failures of these documents stem from the mathematical ignorance of the writers of the standards, sometimes compounded by carelessness and sometimes by a faulty educational ideology. The average mathematics teacher can be led to a better grasp of the material that should be taught and the way to teach it than the writers of the standards seem to believe. The Japanese standards document, exemplary in most respects, falls short in the category of reason. Notes are presented for each state and Japan. An appendix lists the documents reviewed. (Contains one table.) (SLD)