Performance of Middle Grade Students on Quantitative Tasks: A Beginning Dialogue on Quantitative Literacy in Middle Schools

Abstract

Quantitative literacy involves a set of skills necessary to reason about data. Such skills are imperative in our increasingly data-oriented world. Despite the importance of such skills, assessment of quantitative literacy has not been a focus in education and there is a lack of assessment tools that specifically address these skills. This study sought to describe the current levels of middle grade students’ quantitative literacy skills through an assessment contextualized with data from the 2000 United States Census. Over 700 middle school students in grades 6, 7, and 8 completed the assessment with a mean score of 41% correct.