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EDITOR'S NOTE: Tennessee's schools are ranked near the bottom of the nation in academic performance on national assessments. The United States has also experienced a slip in its international student assessment rankings. Recent studies and reports indicate schools are not adequately preparing students for the workforce and post-secondary education. State officials have implemented new graduation requirements, curriculum standards and assessments -- which will take effect this school year -- in an attempt to get education back on track. This is Part III of an ongoing series focusing on local schools as they adjust to the changes.

Officials have incessantly emphasized the state's new graduation requirements over the last several years, but the entire K-12 curriculum has received a substantial overhaul.

The two areas most affected by the changes are math and science, according to Dr. Mike Winstead, Maryville's assistant director of schools. Math instruction changes for grades 3-12 are primarily changes in rigor, Winstead said.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation -- a nonprofit organization that researches, issues publications and directs action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level -- conducts a State of State Standards report each year.

Foundation officials concluded in the 2006 report that Tennessee's lower-grade standards were not sufficient enough to prepare students for advanced math topics. "Arithmetic competence is seriously undermined by the state's focus on calculator use, and the state somehow manages to sidestep a clear directive to memorize basic number facts and do simple calculations amidst a long discussion of reading, writing and comparing numbers.

"Both geometry and algebra start out strong and then simply move too slow, so that important topics get lost or pushed too far into a student's career. Eighth graders, for example, are still not expected to solve and graph linear equations whose coefficients are fractions -- a topic that should have been covered several years earlier," the report said.

Officials have now aligned the state's math curriculum with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Focal Points, which are core skills for each grade level -- pre-K through eighth grade -- that lay a conceptual foundation and organize content.

The new curriculum's grade-level progression closely resembles NCTM's recommendations, and it's supposed to prepare students for materials that are gauged by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and ACT testing regimens.

Teachers are expected to deliver mathematics content through an active process that integrates inquiry, technology and engineering and science.

Students at all grade levels are expected to gain a greater understanding of mathematics. Kindergartners, for example, will use a variety of manipulatives -- such as connecting cubes, number cards, shapes -- to create patterns; and they will model, demonstrate and solve story problems that illustrate addition and subtraction.

Students will now learn how to multiply in second grade, which had been previously reserved for third-graders in Tennessee. All eighth grade students will be learning algebra skills, and some eighth-graders will be taking an algebra course for high school credit under the new standards.

Science changes

The state's science standards and curriculum framework were also found to require some fine-tuning, according to independent reviews conducted over the last several years.

The Mid-Central Regional Education Lab (McREL) study commissioned in 2006 by state officials raised several concerns about the previous science standards. The study found:

Accomplishments tended to be broad in scope and did not address all major topics;

Many accomplishments were duplicated at two or more grade levels;

Significant clarity issues arose from embedding the inquiry process in content standards;

Multiple organizing layers within the standards presented issues in terms of the relationships among components.

The 2006 McREL study also found the 2001 Framework had:

Very good alignment of standards and associated assessment items;

Science performance indicators that expected students to have basic skills in science, with very little expectations for conducting scientific reasoning;

Many standards and corresponding assessment items found to be at lower complexity levels.

The Fordham Report rated the 2001 Tennessee science standards highly. The report concluded:

Organization was complicated by subdividing individual academic benchmarks into "levels;"

Standards covered the physical sciences very well with small errors of fact or exposition;

Life sciences received good handling, especially in high school;

Evolutionary science was covered and properly sequenced.

The Fordham Report gave the 2001 science standards a 'B.'

Engineering skills

After reviewing these reports, state officials have dictated that new science instruction will offer a more hands-on and inquiry-based approach with an emphasis on engineering skills. "We're going deeper with science and promoting a higher level of understanding and application," Winstead said.

According to the Tennessee Department of Education's User's Guide to the Tennessee Science Curriculum Framework, the 2007 revised science standards are:

Focused on major science themes;

Better organized;

Increasingly complex across K-12;

Aligned with the National Science Education Standards, Benchmarks for Science Literacy, NAEP and ACT standards;

Easier to implement than previous versions.

The major changes to the 2007 science framework are:

A shift in the content focus of three major content areas in grades 6-8;

Earth and space science is now the dominant area in sixth grade; life science in seventh grade; and physical science in eighth grade;

Life science, as a course for high school credit, was eliminated;

Conceptual physics was added as a high school course option;

Embedded standards were added for inquiry, technology and engineering, and, in some cases, mathematics.

Officials think these standards will help get Tennessee's students back on track. "The material from the state shows how these standards will prepare students for the ACT as far back as third or fourth grade. It's all driven by higher achievement, and the idea is to have more kids at higher levels. We'll have better-prepared kids. I have no doubt about that," Winstead said.