Multiplication Problems

This week I sat in on a strategic planning meeting for fifth grade math and reading. The focus of this meeting was to review current fifth grade students' and last year's fifth grade students' West Test Score. Once we looked over the student's scores and discussed the West Test as a whole, we did an overview of the West Virginia Content Standards and Objectives that the students need to improve on. This allowed us to think about ways we can help students perform better on the West Test. By narrowing down the small points that need improvement we can help students' improve their scores.
Once these objectives were reviewed, we worked specifically creating goals and coming up with action plans to meet these CSO's. Then at team planning we looked over some of the ways to help students get motivated and create goals for themselves.
One thing that really suprised me coming from this meeting was the amount of students that still do not know their multiplication facts. This seems to be a common problem in West Virignia schools. I know that other interns are doing their action research on strategies to help students learn their multiplication facts. When this issue was brought up at our meeting I was learning that students were able to take an advanced math class starting from 3rd grade. I think that this might hold part of the problem. I know that when I was in school, 3rd grade was the year that I first learned my multiplication facts and practiced mastery of them. It seems like the students are not getting enough of their basic math skills to be able to proceed through higher math problems. I am wondering now what we can do in 5th grade to close this gap.