About the Middle Grades Math Series

The Middle Grades Math (MGM) Series grows out of SREB's longstanding efforts to address the critical middle grades years for young adolescents. Research clearly shows that too many middle grades students are not prepared to take advantage of all that high school can offer and will be unable to be successful in career opportunities after high school. The broader effort — Making Middle Grades Work (MMGW) — is a network of schools, districts and states committed to implementing 10 essential elements in a comprehensive improvement framework. The elements focus on a rigorous and challenging academic core curriculum for all students and on the teaching and learning conditions that support continuous improvement in student achievement. For more information, visit MMGW.

SREB challenges states to lead by clearly outlining goals for improving middle grades education and by providing resources necessary to reach the goals, including those relating to middle grades teachers:

• students are taught by highly qualified teachers who hold a content major or minor in the subject(s) they teach
• teachers engage students through relevant, hands-on materials and activities

No single area challenges the work in Middle Grades more than mathematics. There is clear evidence that our young people, both in the South and across the country, are lagging behind their counterparts internationally. Contributing to the lagging student performance in middle grades mathematics is a lack of clarity in defining teacher qualifications for middle grades mathematics teachers. Too few SREB states have committed to defining middle grades teaching certificate or license that requires teachers to have a content focus in mathematics. While some SREB states allow secondary certified teachers to teach in the middle grades and thus can staff middle grades mathematics classes with content experts, in some states teachers can still teach eighth grade mathematics with an elementary certificate. This means that eighth-graders can have teachers for mathematics with very little content background, a practice that runs contrary to the numerous studies that document the positive impact on achievement for students in classrooms with teachers who are content experts.

The Middle Grades Mathematics Series is a first step to addressing this challenge, first by defining a set of common competencies and then by developing a series of online courses built around the competencies.