Panel Sets Math Standards for ‘Nation’s Report Card’

A national board Friday determined for the first time the kind of mathematics problems that students in grades 4, 8 and 12 should be able to solve on congressionally mandated tests.

Members of the National Assessment Governing Board said they hope that the new method of reporting scores will arouse a public that has grown complacent about the quality of schooling in the United States.

According to the standards, for example, a fourth-grader:

--At the “basic” level, should be able to tell the most reasonable distance for a person to walk in an hour if given a choice of two miles, two yards, two feet and two inches.

--At the “proficient” level, should be able to pick, from a list of four, the value of five dozen eggs costing 89 cents a dozen.

--At the “advanced” level, should be able to calculate the number of feet in 60 inches.

The standards, adopted by the board after prolonged haggling between educators and policy-makers, will be used in gauging the proficiency of students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as “the nation’s report card.”

The only member of the panel to oppose the standards, Dorothy Rich, president of the Home and School Institute, said she is worried that the test scores will be misused.

The panel told its staff to continue work on achievement levels for reading and writing so that a report can be made in the fall.

“I am confident that the levels . . . will be able to withstand scrutiny,” said Roy Truby, executive director of the board, adding that “defining achievement levels is a matter of judgment--not of science.”

The “report card,” mandated by Congress, is the only nationally representative, continuing assessment of what American students know and can do in various academic subjects.

As examples of standards at the other grade levels:

--A basic-level eighth-grader should be able to tell whether to measure the length of a pencil in centimeters, meters or kilometers.

--A proficient eighth-grader should be able to find the average age when given the ages of five children.

--An advanced eighth-grader should be able to calculate the probability that a person can draw a chip with an even number when nine chips are mixed in a sack.

--A basic-level high school senior should be able to determine the combined weight of 50 prize-winning tomatoes with an average weight of 2.36 pounds each.

--A proficient senior should be able to tell whether a triangle with a 120-degree angle is a right triangle.

--An advanced senior should be able to give the diagonal measurement of a TV screen when the width and length are given.