The ASA team is concerned with the limited role data analysis, probability, and statistics play in the K–5 strands. High-achieving countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, England, and Finland include a data category in the earlier grades. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) 2011 Mathematics Framework devotes 15% of the fourth-grade assessment to data display and 20% of the eighth-grade assessment to data and chance. If the Common Core Standards are to be internationally benchmarked, data analysis and probability should extend into grades K–5, with the TIMMS percentages as targets.
The Mathematics Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is consistent with TIMMS, explains,
The grade 4 and grade 8 NAEP exams include probability, which is not introduced in the Common Core Standards until high school. In the current K–12 draft standards, students will not yet have the necessary skills needed to perform well on these exams. Adding relevant statistics and probability content in the K–8 grades would emphasize the pivotal role of statistics in a 21st-century education and prepare students for the data analysis, statistics, and probability content on the grade 4 and grade 8 TIMMS and NAEP exams.
Many prominent ASA members are involved in the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Former ASA president Richard Scheaffer has been serving on the Common Core work group, and Roxy Peck is serving on the feedback group. There are other ASA members involved in reviews at the state level, including Henry Kranendonk in Wisconsin and Jerry Moreno in Ohio, as was Mike Shaughnessy, NCTM president-elect.
Shaughnessy was in dialog with the ASA team and involved in NCTM’s review. In a letter signed by current NCTM President Henry Kepner accompanying NCTM’s review of the public draft of the K–12 standards, NCTM argued for the need to include more statistics at the elementary level. In part, the letter stated, “Learning about statistics and data analysis is an important part of students’ mathematical preparation, and statistics learning should begin in the elementary grades to prepare students to deal with information in their world.” Kepner’s letter and NCTM’s comments on the K–12 standards are available at the NCTM web site, here.
Several ASA members also participated in the CBMS Forum on the Content and Assessment of School Mathematics last October in Reston, Virginia. The CBMS recommendations from this forum, titled “Common Standards and New Assessments for K–12: Recommendations from the National Forum convened by the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences,” is available from the CBMS web site, here.
We appreciate the dedicated work of the ASA review team. The review timelines were short, and the group put in an extraordinary amount of time reviewing these documents. We hope their reviews and comments will have a positive impact on the nation’s schoolchildren and enhance statistical literacy across the United States. The final draft of the Common Core Standards should be released sometime in May.
Copies of the ASA letters sent to the CCSSO and Common Core Standards writers accompanying the ASA reviews of the Common Core Standards can be found here on the ASA web site. For more information regarding the ASA reviews of the Common Core State Standards, contact Jerry Moreno at moreno@jcu.edu or Rebecca Nichols at rebecca@amstat.org.
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