Mr. Higgins’ Blog

Jan 19th, 2009 by Mr. Higgins

While the national trend seems to be leaning toward “shoveling” four year of mathematics into high school everywhere, Ohio is just beginning the process through the new Ohio CORE curriculum which starts with the class of 2014.

Why use the word “shoveling”? Because I have a feeling that it will be used to create new senior math courses around the state that are dumbed down versions of current courses. Here are my thoughts and questions to those mathematics teachers in any state

Here is our current school curriculum:

Here are our current thoughts for the four year requirement:

Questions that still need to be answered BY SOMEONE OUT THERE; especially if they work for the Ohio Department of Education.

Will courses such as Digital Electronics and AP Computer Science count as a mathematics credit?
Are we making a mistake by offering semester courses? We know it splits the department; however, we want students to take courses they have some interest in taking for their future ventures.
Will basically any mathematics course that is created with a prerequisite of Algebra II satisfy the Ohio CORE?

This is what I call a blog entry that may turn out to be rhetorical…unless those with the answers and experience come forth.

Posted in Math, Teaching

5 Responses to “Ohio CORE: 4 Credits needed in Math”

on 19 Jan 2009 at 11:09 pm1Jackie Ballarini

I don’t teach in Ohio, nor do I work for the Department of Ed, sorry.

With that said, have you considered adding AP Stats to the senior year courses? Students with a strong background in Alg II should be well prepared for this course.
on 19 Jan 2009 at 11:20 pm2Mr. Higgins

We have thought very little about AP Stats with basically no experience; therefore, as a department, none of us know how much knowledge a student needs to pass AP Stats. We have never taught stats at the school and are looking to start with Probability and Statistics as an introductory course. Could you shed some more light on AP Stats? Provide me with some sort of resource? I have not went on AP Central to dig deeper because we are still a couple of years away.
on 20 Jan 2009 at 1:29 am3Leigh Ann

Texas went through this recently and decided that AP computer science could count for the 4th year of math – get in touch with your state doe and let them know there is precedent
on 22 Jan 2009 at 6:58 pm4Jackie Ballarini

The first few pages of this document from the College Board give a nice description http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap08_statistics_coursedesc.pdf . Some schools look at AP Stats as the course for seniors who “aren’t ready” for AP Calc, but the only pre-req is Alg II (they really only need to know a little bit about logs).

Having a couple of years puts you in a good position, there are some nice summer workshops available to get a new teacher ready. All the past free response questions are on the College Board’s website. There are also quite a few resources here.

Disclaimer: I haven’t taught AP Stats (although I hope to) but I did shadow this course during my student teaching (I gave up my prep period to do so).
on 10 Sep 2009 at 10:52 pm5Melissa Sizemore

Will some schools just skip Geometry to get Algebra 2 in???