Those hefty math textbooks children lug home might get lighter in coming years, thanks to a National Mathematics Advisory Panel report released yesterday that recommends a careful winnowing of elementary and middle-grade curricula to better focus students for algebra.

President Bush created the panel in April 2006, amid concerns about the nation's slipping math performance and a debate over whether schools should use traditional or new-style instructional approaches.

The panel, which included Carnegie Mellon University professor Robert S. Siegler, didn't recommend one style or another. Rather, the group specified topics, or "critical foundations," that it wants students to grasp by eighth grade so they're ready for algebra.

The panel recommended that schools teach fewer topics per year, focus on those most critical for algebra and cover each key topic more thoroughly than they do now, a technique used in countries that outperform the United States in math. Panelists said current practice has schools covering unnecessary material and revisiting some topics year to year, with publishers producing textbooks running 700 to 1,000 pages.

The report calls for students to demonstrate proficiency with multiplication and division of whole numbers by the end of grade five, proficiency with integers by the end of grade six and proficiency with fractions by the end of grade seven.

That timetable would force some schools to introduce key topics earlier than they do now -- and get more students into algebra by grade eight.

"For some districts, that's going to be a quantum leap," said Laurie Heinricher, curriculum director for Hampton Township School District.

The panel called algebra a "gateway to later achievement."

"Students need it for any form of mathematics later in high school; moreover, research shows that completion of algebra II correlates successfully with success in college and earnings from employment," the report says, adding that the effects are particularly striking for minority students.

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings accepted the report at a meeting in Falls Church, Va. The panel's findings were based on previous research on math instruction.

Districts don't have to adopt the findings. After the National Reading Panel released a 2000 report on promoting achievement in that field, however, the government gave districts financial incentives to comply with the findings.

The report, coming as some districts adopt scripted curricula to better meet their state's learning standards, says classroom teachers should be left with some discretion in how to present material. It also says the so-called "math wars" -- debates over whether to stress conceptual understanding or skill practice, for example -- miss the point.

"These capabilities are mutually supportive, each facilitating learning of the others," the report says.

Dr. Siegler said he believed the report would quiet the math wars, noting some districts already have seen the "false dichotomy" between instructional approaches and moved to a more balanced approach.

The National Reading Panel didn't immediately quell the "reading wars," however, and Ms. Heinricher said she believes the math debate will continue.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association and Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teachers union, said they hadn't reviewed the report and couldn't comment.

The report soon may have an impact in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, where officials are selecting new elementary and middle-grade math textbooks. Among other complaints, critics say the Everyday Math program used in most district elementary schools overemphasizes theory, short-changes skill development and revisits topics too many times.

"We will take the recommendations and use them to help us set the direction as we go through the textbook selection process," district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.

Dr. Siegler, professor of cognitive psychology, said in a telephone interview that the panel's work highlighted students' profound difficulty with fractions and critical need to improve in that area, given the link with algebra.

The report also highlights the need to infuse more math education into pre-kindergarten, saying that's the place to begin confronting the achievement gap facing disadvantaged students.

"If you start behind, you continue behind," Dr. Siegler said.