NEW 8TH-GRADE STANDARDS PROPOSED FOR A.V. SCHOOLS.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

In an unprecedented, collaborative effort among Antelope Valley school districts, committees of local educators have proposed common minimum skills that they say eighth-graders should possess before moving on to high school.

Recommendations include teaching eighth-graders algebra or a math course now taught to high school freshmen, and expecting them to be able to write coherent, focused essays and research reports that contain a balance between research and original ideas.

``It's unique that all the school districts are working together to come up with common exit standards,'' said William Stadler, regional coordinator for the Los Angeles County Office of Education for the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys. ``They recognize the value of making sure that parents can know what their children can be able to achieve by the time they leave the eighth grade regardless of which district they attend.''

The recommendations, drawn up by math and language arts committees consisting of teachers, principals and administrators from the Antelope Valley Union High School District and seven local elementary districts, will go to elementary school boards for review and input.

Officials emphasized that the proposals are still merely recommendations, and will not take effect without action by individual school boards.

The proposed standards represent what committee members believe are basic, minimum criteria, and each district will have the flexibility to expand upon or enhance them, officials said.

``It's a working document to draw a base line of what we would expect to be the minimum standards that we hope all school districts could adopt,'' Palmdale School District Superintendent Nancy Smith said. ``The idea behind it is to get something valleywide.''

The committees began meeting in summer and presented their draft proposal report to the elementary superintendents at a meeting two weeks ago. Each district will present the proposal to its respective board of trustees and staff for their review, input and endorsement.

The impetus for recommendations, in part, was new state math standards adopted last year that stipulate students take Algebra I in the eighth grade. But school officials said common standardized measures have been a longtime goal.

``The whole articulation effort has been something the superintendents have been driving at for probably six or seven years. We just thought our kids in the valley ought to be in sync,'' Lancaster School District Superintendent Steve Gocke said. ``It's a matter of people getting on the same page and expecting the same things out of the kids.''

Stadler noted the committees' work was not driven by the high school district.

``Quite often people see the high school district as dictating to the feeder districts on what children should be able to do,'' Stadler said. ``In this effort, you had the elementary or feeder districts determining the criteria according to the state standards. The only involvement of the high school district was taking part to facilitate the process.''

The report said the math committee recognizes that it will take some time to raise the skills and levels of expectations for graduating eighth-graders.

``A timetable has been established with very basic 1999-2000 exit criteria for eighth-graders. Each year, the standards and expectations for exiting eighth-graders will be raised through an incremental process to meet the ultimate goal of Algebra I or Interactive Math Program I (a ninth-grade course) for all eighth-graders by the year 2005,'' the report said.

Math skills and concepts eighth-graders should understand include solving problems using ratio and proportion, percentages, order operations, exponents, simple square roots, and reciprocals; substituting real numbers for variables to evaluate a formula; and using the Pythagorean theorem to determine distance, the report said.

In the area of problem-solving and mathematical reasoning, students should be able to make decisions about how to approach problems, use strategies, skills and concepts in finding solutions, and provide closure to a solution process, the committee recommended.

The language arts committee recommended that students write and speak with a command of ``Standard American English'' at the eighth-grade level.

The report defined standard American English as ``the language in which most educational texts and government and media publications are written in the United States. Standard American English, a relative concept, varies widely in pronunciation and in idiomatic use but maintains a fairly uniform grammatical structure,'' the report said.

The report also recommended that students read, respond to, and analyze a wide range of literature and written materials and make connections between what they read and real-life situations; use the writing process to produce multiple paragraph narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive essays that contain an introduction, supporting evidence and a conclusion; and prepare speech outlines that include an introduction, a body and conclusion, the report said.