TIMSS Math Standards

K-8 math standards were created by Dr. Bill Schmidt and a team of mathematics educators, mathematicians and educational researchers.

The intent of the project was to create a standard that is mathematically vigorous and educationally meaningful. The committee worked over a period of 6 months to refine the standards.

About the Standards

The K-8 standards are presented in three columns. The first column presents the standard itself which states what students should be taught at that grade level. The number of standards for each grade range from around 10 to 15 in grades K-2 to around 25-30 in grades 3-8. They are focused, hierarchically sequenced, and include virtually no redundancies across grades. The second column, labeled “subpoints”, clarifies further the standard. The final column (remarks) is intended to provide teachers with specific comments or suggestions that center around defining exclusions, giving illustrations, and proposing specific mathematical suggestions about how best to present the mathematics in the standard.

The standards are not all equal in terms of the implications for the amount of instructional time to be devoted to them. Included is a metric to specify the relative amount of emphasis such standards should receive within each grade level. The metric presented is an estimate of the number of days of instruction needed to adequately cover the standard. This estimate is based on data from teachers at those grade levels. For this purpose, an “instruction day” is defined as between 50-60 minutes with a total of 160 such days in each instructional year (grade). These are not intended to be prescriptive nor highly precise since individual teachers need to adapt these to their individual classrooms, but it is intended to give a sense of the relative importance of the standard for instruction.

Several general points are important to make up front:

• Use of calculators is excluded except where their use is explicitly noted.
• There is no explicit mention of an algebra strand in grades K-5. The pre-algebra type of understanding and skills are in the standards, but they are integrated with the relevant arithmetic standards. This in no sense relegates them to lesser importance but rather places them in the relevant context.
• Mental calculations are included throughout grades K-8 reflecting their importance for estimating and helping to determine the accuracy of computations.

• Click here to view the complete 50 page PDF document (288 KB)