RHS Students Will Be At Least One Year Behind Rest Of State In Mathematics

Challenge for the Rich County School District's Students Planning To Attend A College or University.

Chris S. Coray, Ph.D, 
Full Professor Emeritus, Mathematics, Utah State University

Utah, along with much of the nation, has gone to a “Common Core” approach in mathematics education in secondary schools.  This change, which is fairly dramatic, has consequences and challenges for small school districts with limited student populations and resources.

Beginning this year students at Rich High School will take what is now titled Secondary Math I, Secondary Math II, and Secondary Math III during grades 9-11.  Subject material in this mathematics sequence has been rearranged from historical methodology.  There are some issues related to this change that adversely affect students in this district and in other small, resource limited areas. 

To begin with, successful completion of these three classes does not make high school students calculus ready (source—Diana Suddreth, Mathematics Specialist, Utah State Office of Education, July 1, 2013).  In larger districts and schools there are generally companion “Honors” sequences to be taken in place of the standard common core.  If available, the three honors courses taken together in grades 9-11 do get a student calculus ready, as they contain extra material not in the standard course.  However, it does take a level IV qualified math instructor to teach the honors sequence.  Small schools and districts may not have the resources or population to run both sequences or may not have a level IV mathematics teacher.

If students finish the standard core sequence, without the honors strand, then to catch up they need to take as seniors a concurrent enrollment pair of college classes, Math 1050 and 1060, if available, through one of the universities.  This may be possible in the senior year of high school here, which would get a student calculus ready upon university entrance.  By comparison, at most schools in larger districts the students are able to take the honors core sequence, then take AP (Advanced Placement) calculus in their senior year of high school.  If they achieve a sufficiently high score on the national AP calculus test they earn university calculus credit. 

There is not an AP Calculus course at Rich High School.  Absent AP Calculus, even with the concurrent enrollment courses, students who graduate here are very often a year behind peers from other districts and large schools.  If the concurrent enrollment courses are not available then students would be two years behind many students in larger districts and schools. 

To illustrate a potential problem by example, suppose a student wishes to study engineering in college.  Admittance into the professional component of such a major is not allowed until all the central mathematics courses required for an undergraduate engineering major are completed.  As these courses are serial in nature and cannot be bundled, every year in delay in getting through the required mathematics curriculum at a university lengthens the university program by precisely that same amount.  Students who are not calculus ready at entrance to a university program are at least a year behind in virtually all technical majors.

Admission to a calculus course at a university can also be achieved by a sufficiently high score on a placement test offered by the university, but chances of passing such placement tests are not good without the requisite preliminary course work.  These inexpensive placement tests are easily scheduled as to time and place for students and can be taken locally, but they are rigorous.

How a school district decides to use its limited resources is always challenging, but all should know that the consequences of current choices (no AP classes and no Honors Secondary Math core sequence) can have an adverse effect on the children of this county as they seek to get increased education, especially in technical fields.  The youth of this county are as bright as any in our state and have an admirable work ethic.  Largely because of the district size and its resources, the students just do not have opportunities that are commonly available in most of the state.

My external sources for the data in this document are Diana Suddreth, Mathematics Specialist, Utah State Office of Education; Greg Wheeler, USU Math Professor and school board member in the Uintah Basin.