'Time for change': NC approves new school math requirements, standards

The State Board of Education approved new math standards for all grade levels Thursday without opposition, including changes that would remove Math 3 and Math 4 as required high school courses.

The changes aim to make math more relevant to students, especially as they lose interest in older grades. The state Department of Public Instruction surveyed teachers about the existing standards and found far less satisfaction among teachers in the higher grade levels.

The new standards are designed to better engage students in math. When the standards were first proposed, DPI leaders told WRAL News they worried that students losing interest in math as they get older is cutting too many of them off prematurely from math-related careers; at the same time, they hear from more employers about a growing need for employees with certain math skills.

North Carolina is among more than 20 states reworking the way they teach math as the United States continues to lag behind other developed nations in math. Many of those states are working with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin to adjust the standards, and the Center has emphasized creating new pathways for high school students to structure their math classes.

The changes are part of the state's routine updates to its academic standards. The math standards were last updated in 2017. A team of four dozen people wrote the standards, after receiving feedback from about 5,700 survey responses and since presenting its initial drafts over the past several months.

The standards will go into effect in 2028.

Replacing Math 3 and Math 4 --- and rethinking every high school math class

Math 3 and Math 4 will be replaced with math electives, chosen by students related to their plans for after high school.

Though the math classes will be at the discretion of the students, students will still be required to take two of those elective classes.

Right now, students can already replace Math 4 with a different math class of their choosing. But this change would scrap Math 4 as a class entirely and also allow students to replace Math 3.

Counselors will steer students toward which two math classes would apply to what the student plans to do after high school, whether entering college, a career or military service. There will be suggested pathways for students pursuing medical careers or those who planned to go straight into the military or law enforcement, for example.

Sunghwan Byun, an assistant professor in the North Carolina State University College of Education, is a fan of the changes, which he said will be more aligned with today's workforce.

"It's about time for change," he said.

Byun is focused on science, technology, engineering and math education and directs the university's Education Research for Data Science and AI Academy.

Companies have been wanting more people skilled in working with data and in statistics, he said. The changes, coupled with two new statistics classes for high schoolers, address that, he said.

Too often, students can be pushed into calculus for their fourth math credit, even though it's most relevant for people interested in engineering and not as relevant for other STEM careers, such as nursing, he said.

"Calculus is one of the gatekeeping course for entering the STEM discipline, and so the current standards have a huge emphasis on preparing students for a successful undergraduate college calculus experience," Byun said. "But the in the past 10 years, a lot happened, especially the emergence of data science, and more recently we have now AI."

Students will still be required to take four high school math classes, including Math 1 and Math 2. That's more than most states, which only require two or three high school math classes.

But what's in every class would change.

Math 1 and Math 2, typically taken in early high school years, will be significantly revised to focus on applying math to real-life uses and integrating more technology into classwork, including graphing calculators and artificial intelligence. The use of those technologies will align with current industry expectations and practices. Math 1 includes algebra, and Math 2 includes geometry.

The eight elective classes will be Mathematical and Statistical Modeling, Applied Statistics and Data Science, Applied Logic and Reasoning (the proposed new name for Discrete Math), AP Precalculus, AP Statistics, AP Calculus, and an approved International Baccalaureate or college math course.

Two of those classes will be new offerings from schools, essentially replacing the currently required Math 3 and Math 4. Applied Statistics and Data Science will focus on using data to solve problems and communicate conclusions. Mathematical and Statistical Modeling will combine statistics and applied mathematics and include research, requiring students to use reasoning and math skills to evaluate choices based on data.

Real-world application

Leaders are also emphasizing real-world applications for math as a part of teaching new standards.

They describe it as a three-step process: understanding a concept, becoming fluent in it, and applying it to challenges one might encounter in life. It's a practice many teachers and schools already emphasize in projects.

That will change how teachers teach at a detailed level, Byun said, and they'll have to focus on more than just procedures.

"That will definitely benefit students in a way that you know they'll see the meaningfulness in their math curriculum and pathways," Byun said. "Hopefully, because of that, they'll persevere through some of the challenges they may face and, you know, have a higher success rate on that as well."

The standards themselves don't necessarily list a host of lessons for real-world applications.

Standards are the set of skills students are expected to attain while in those classes. They come with "crosswalk" documents that list examples of a way a student can demonstrate that they have a skill.

School districts and teachers take it from there, choosing curriculum and then writing lesson plans to go with it.

The standards documents contain directives for when students should apply a standard to their lives. In sixth grade, for example, students are urged to apply geometric and spatial skills --- like finding the area of certain shapes --- to real-world scenarios, though it doesn't list an example.