North Carolina is working on a major overhaul of its math standards that state officials hope will better connect what students learn in the classroom to the real world.
The state Department of Public Instruction unveiled its first draft of the new standards in November. Now, it’s incorporating feedback before it unveils a second draft of the standards on April 15. The state Board of Education will vote on a final draft this summer.
North Carolina students currently need four math credits. They take the required Math 1, Math 2 and Math 3 courses before choosing a fourth course. For students planning on entering a university after high school, those options include things such as the NC Math 4 course, precalculus, AP Calculus, AP Statistics or math for computer science. Students planning on attending a community college or entering the workforce can choose between a CTE course or AP/IB Computer Science.
The draft proposal would eliminate Math 3 and give students the chance to choose two courses, with a goal of giving students options that align with potential career aspirations.
“Based on your potential interests, there are courses that would be designed to set you up for further exploration in that field,” said DPI Section Chief for Math Charles Aiken.
The general offerings aren’t changing all that much. But the state is considering adding two new courses that develop sought-after workforce skills: an applied data science course and mathematical statistical modeling.
“We don’t want to ask a rising junior to know for a fact what they think they want to do eight years from now, but we want to give them a sense of the mathematics that are available to them,” Aiken said. “If they think they want to go into business, applied data science is something we hear from our business leaders they need a significant amount of.”
Students on that community college or workforce path would still get to select a CTE course — they’d also get the ability to pick one more elective instead of taking Math 3.
“Our students shared with us often that even if they were highly interested in the math, it wasn’t always very clear how they would use that when they left,” Aiken said.
