Last week our state board voted to recommend CORE 24 to the legislature for implementation over a six year period. The changes include increasing graduation requirements from 19 credits to 24 credits with increases in math and science. Students will be choosing between three pathways each with different content requirements designed to make them ready for college, job training, and the workforce. Since there is also a significant price tag for these changes that must be included for it to become law, it should be an interesting 2009 legislative session. This, combined with any recommendations from the Basic Education Task Force on school funding may carry it beyond interesting.
Those organizations advocating for the math and science increases are celebrating as they believe these additional requirements will result in all students being better prepared for post high school learning and work. Will these changes lead to increases in the number of students who want to become engineers, one of the issues that seems to be a driver for the change? What are we not considering that may have negative consequences for students and for districts?
What are your thoughts about this recommendation?
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2 comments:
I don't have a problem with making sure students graduate with "knowledge," but I think this push toward more requirements puts a big damper on what students can choose as electives and what they can pursue in areas they are interested in learning about. As long as students get a good foundation in the necessary fields of learning, it seems more advantageous to allow them to pursue their own dreams and goals and to add what they want to their plate of knowledge as they strive for that future. They will choose what's necessary to do that. If so many requirements are put upon them it seems that their creative souls will feel overwhelmed and many will either give up or just do what they have to to get out of the education system.
As a parent, I already feel like there are so many demands put on children that it not only adds stress and emotional strain to them, but does the same for the parents as they try to keep up in an ever-increasing whirlwind of state-mandated rules and regulations. Why don't we put more focus on technical schools, smaller colleges and apprenticeships instead of pushing so much for four year colleges where so much time seems to be wasted on non-essentials and unsupervised party fests.
Please know that I haven't studied the thinking behind the proposal, just the proposal itself. I'll use your own words (or something like them)...Core24 represents a tweak to a system that needs fundamental change. As such it represents at best a step sideways and at worst a step backwards. As a state we do not do well at educating young people in math and science. Requiring students to take more ineffective math and science classes is not going to help. If Core24 is percieved as the solution and we take our eyes off of the dooming reality above then it will only delay getting to a solution that will really work and thus be a step backward. The Core24 proposal is not evidence that at the highest levels of our educational systems we are making the needed cultural shifts, including the shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.
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