Standardized test scores continue to be used as an important indicator of academic progress despite increasing efforts among educators to emphasize indicators related to social and emotional learning. In third grade, the standardized test scores determine whether the early educational years devoted to literacy ensure that students effectively learned to read. Once students learn to read, they are reading to learn. The eighth grade math proficiency scores are one indicator illustrating whether students are effectively reading to learn. In addition, proficiency on eighth-grade math is a predictor of graduation, college completion and success in adulthood.

This indicator establishes the student math proficiency rate among eighth grade students experiencing intergenerational poverty on Utah's SAGE test for school years 2014 to 2018 and on Utah's RISE test for school year 2019 and later. The target rate represents the proficiency rate among all Utah students. 

In 2014, Utah changed its standardized testing tool from the Criterion Referenced Test (CRT) to the Student Assessment of Growth and Excellence (SAGE) test. CRT and SAGE test results are not comparable. As a result, proficiency data is only available for the schools years in which the SAGE was administered. 

RISE, also an adaptive test, replaced SAGE for grades three through eight in SY 2019. RISE is multistage adaptive rather than item adaptive like the SAGE. RISE uses the same Utah item bank questions developed by Utah teachers for SAGE, and USBE worked to maintain Math and ELA scale scores and performance level descriptors across SAGE and RISE, thus the SAGE and RISE tests results are comparable.