Rigor and relevance

Upon returning from the DWMP Community Dialogue last night, I did a little channel surfing to see whether the Penguins might still be playing. I stopped briefly at PCN, where Pennsylvania's Secretary of Education, Gerry Zahorchek, was testifying - yet again - to the benefits of a state-wide curriculum and state-wide graduation exams.

I only stayed for a moment, so perhaps I missed something. But in defense of state exams in Algebra II, I'm pretty sure that I heard him say, "students who successfully complete Algebra II are more likely to go to college, and far less likely to drop out of school." 

Well, duh. Do I have to say it? Correlation does not imply causality.

What Dr. Zahorchek did, unwittingly, was make an excellent case for giving students opportunities to take probability, statistics and logic, instead of a required Algebra II course.

I recently had a conversation with a retired high school Math teacher, who told me that the standard Algebra-Geometry-Trigonometry-Algebra II/Calculus curriculum originated in the 1930's, in order to prepare future engineers. She questioned why everyone had to take a curriculum that was designed for less than 1% of the population. So - until the PSSAs came along - she would often teach elective courses in discrete mathematics and personal finance as a way to make math more interesting and/or relevant for students who had no intention of ever adding "PE" to their business cards.

In the national endeavor to improve public education, there is a general agreement that three critical components of educational reform are "rigor, relevance and relationship." But somehow, we've adopted a very narrow definition of "rigor" and we've applied the same definition to everyone.

For a future engineer, "rigor" might take the form of AP Physics. but for an aspiring attorney it might be a course in "Constitutional Law". Someone who wants to be an automotive technician needs to take rigorous classes that lead to industry certifications.

For what percentage of students is Algebra II relevant?