SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium
http://www.smarterbalanced.org/about/procurement/

If a student is well prepared, algebra is a good thing regardless of the student’s age. But if a student is not prepared, it can be a bad thing, regardless of the student’s age. Developmental readiness shouldn’t mean a developmental mandate. -- Tom Loveless, Brookings Institution

SBOE gives preliminary approval to new math standards
Educators based the new standards on the draft Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), as well as math standards from Massachusetts, Minnesota and international standards from places such as Singapore, which are all believed to have some of the world’s best math curriculum standards.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/news_release.aspx?id=2147505332

Unfortunately, Texas has over corrected its minimalist problem by adding too many standards—many of which descend inappropriately into pedagogy—and including a lot of unnecessary repetition. Worse, the new draft standards overemphasize process, and arithmetic is not given suitable priority. -- W. Stephen Wilson, a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University

The crux of the passage is that the pineapple challenges the hare to a race, and the other animals are convinced the pineapple must have a trick up its sleeve and will win. When the pineapple stands still, the animals eat it. The moral of the story: “Pineapples don’t have sleeves.”

The state has 522 public school districts and 20 charter schools, according to the department. Of the public schools, more than 100 are dependent districts with no high schools, going only through sixth or eighth grade.

Steve Estepp, the executive director of curriculum and instruction in the Hilliard schools, sees it as shifting the role of teachers “from the gatekeeper of knowledge to the role of the coach.”