To provide an idea of the mathematics understandings and skills displayed by students performing at different levels on the TIMSS mathematics achievement scale, TIMSS described performance at four international benchmarks. These benchmarks are standards that describe what students can be expected to know and do at a designated degree of proficiency.

• Those students performing at the top 10% Benchmark can organize information, make generalizations, and explain solution strategies in non-routine problem solving solutions.
  
• Those students performing at the top 25% can apply their understanding and knowledge in a wide variety of relatively complex situations.
• Those students performing at the upper 50% can apply basic mathematical knowledge in straightforward situations.
• Those students performing at the upper 75 % can do basic computations with whole numbers.

These benchmark descriptions will be one of the pieces of information that the district will be able to immediately use. These benchmark descriptions of student performance will allow individual teachers to analyze the standards to which they hold students accountable as they design quality learning experiences for their students.

In addition, these descriptors will allow the district to develop assessments that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum.

In Mathematics:

Many entities who participated in the 1995 TIMSS study have warned that there is so much information provided in this report that it will take months and perhaps years to truly understand the data. However, this chart illustrates information that can be immediately gleaned from the report. This data allows us to determine how many of our students reach a specific degree of mathematical proficiency.

• Since our goal is to create students who can compete in a global society, we elected to look at our results in comparison to the top performing countries labeled International top 5 on the chart.
• 24% of NCUSD 203 8th graders scored in the top ten percent. Typically only 10% of the students would be expected to reach this benchmark if achievement were distributed equally. 9% U.S. and 38% of I top 5
• 59 % of NCUSD 203 8th graders scored in the upper quartile. Typically only 25 % of the students would be expected to reach this benchmark if achievement were distributed equally. 28% of U.S. and 68% of I top 5
• 91% of NCUSD 203 8th graders scored at the median benchmark. Typically only 50 % of the students would be expected to reach this benchmark if achievement were distributed equally. This level of achievement indicates that even those students typically labeled as “the students in the middle” are obtaining a level of competency that allows them to compete in a global community.
• 99 % of NCUSD 203 8th graders scored at the lower quartile. Typically only 75% of the students would be expected to reach this benchmark if achievement were distributed equally.