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A UA mathematics professor is aiding in a nationwide initiative working to standardize math standards, detail expectations for students, promote professional development for teachers and also evaluate education policy.

A University of Arizona professor co-authored one of two new reports detailing the math and English language skills students in the nation's K-12 system should be mastering. 

William G. McCallum, a University Distinguished Professor and mathematics department head, was among 15 education leaders and researchers across the nation to draft, "College and Career Readiness Standards for Mathematics." A separate working group wrote the report on English-language art skills.

The reports, released Monday in Washington, D.C., are part of an effort headed up by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.

The two organizations earlier this year launched the Common Core State Standards Initiative with the intention to develop nationwide standards that states could then adopt. Their purpose is to better prepare students in the areas of English-language art skills and math for career-level jobs.

Ultimately, the standards are expected to help states align curriculum, instruction, assessments, professional development and accountability systems.

The initiative is not about standardizing testing or the ways in which K-12 educators instruct their students, McCallum said. Instead, it is about developing cross-state math standards so that teachers across the nation are teaching their students the same mathematical principles.

Education and federal agencies have decried the state of public education in the United States compared with other countries. The Obama administration has called for more stringent measures to improve both student learning, and for clearly discernable assessments.

Also, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted by U.S. Congress this year provides financial incentives for a range of educational usages, particularly to states that are working to improve the quality of education for its students while also focusing on standards and assessments.

The report McCallum helped to author focuses on 10 standards: numbers, quantity, expressions, equations, functions, modeling, shape, coordinates, probability and statistics. 

"What we're trying to say is that it is important for people to know how to do statistics and who understand mathematical modeling," said MaCallum, who also founded the UA's Institute for Mathematics and Education. "Part of this is important for general citizenship."

For example, McCallum said it is important for an informed citizenry to understand medical and scientific reports on a range of topics related to disease, or to understand general statistics and how data is collected and interpreted.

"It's not an unusual list, but the idea of organizing curriculum around a few coherent standards is a new way of describing things," he noted.

Kara Schlosser, the Council of Chief State School Officers' communications director, reported the governors and chief state school officers in 48 states and three territories have signed a memorandum of agreement.

Arizona is among the states that support the effort, which has been endorsed by the American Association of School Administrators, Carnegie Learning, the Education Development Center, Inc. and the National Parent Teacher Association, among others.

"This Common Core State Standards Initiative is a significant and historic opportunity for states to collectively accelerate and drive education reform toward the ultimate goal of all children graduating from high school ready for college, work, and success in the global economy," according to the initiative's Web site.

"Students' knowledge and skills come to life and take their value when melded with the ways they approach mathematics-as described by the Core Practices," the site stated.

McCallum and his team considered a range of evidence-based models to influence its decisions to develop standards that will ultimate lead to students having a much deeper understanding of complex mathematical functions while also being able to problem solve.

For the second phase of the report, he will lead the math working team, which will include Phil Daro, a senior fellow with America's Choice, and Jason Zimba, a physics and mathematics professor at Bennington College in Vermont who works with Student Achievement Partners. The team will be comprised of about 25 educators, mathematicians, policymakers and teachers from across the nation.

The standards will be reviewed by a validation committee this month and, in December, final reports are expected. After being validated in January, both reports will be provided to states, which will then be able to adopt the common core standards.

States that ultimately choose to adopt the standards will present the ways the standards will be implented during the spring of 2010.

"Some people are surprised there is not a standard and that, state-by-state, it is decided what to teach," McCallum said. "There is a lot of overlap, but there is a lot of variation, too."

Therein lies the problem, he said, noting that the lack of standards my cause challenges to more mobile students and for textbook publishers who have tended to print an overwhelming amount of information to cover bases from state-to-state.

"Part of the problem is in telling a coherent story, so this is about standardization and coherence," McCallum said.

"We need to decide on a coherent body of material that has, as a progression – hopefully – the ability to help students and will allow teachers to have a better grasp on the material," he added. "This has been a pretty extraordinary effort."