I'm just stunned, is this a good idea?

Um, people not knowing anything about economics is what got us in trouble in the first place. Also, a lack of knowledge about American History.

How can the school be in compliance with the State if your school is dropping classes that are required for graduation? Your school board should be getting involved and contacting the State Board of Education and making them aware of this.

Did your Superintendent finished hs? What is he thinking!?

Actually it is the entire District not just our school and the school board is voting on it tonight. We just got the particulars today but our alternative schools have had lesser requirements.

This guy used to be a middle school teacher.

WTF? Economics is a must, in my opinion. How can your district ignore the state rules?

Pssh, like you need to know anything about the economy to get elected president. You don’t even need to know how to pronounce words correctly. Shoot for the stars baby.

No, not good ideas.

haha economics is boring… doesnt take too long to study economics isnt it…

I don’t think individual districts in public schools can just “do their own thing” according to the whims of their superintendents or directors. Or if they can, that is a big mistake. We really need to have a unified national curriculum.

If those changes prevent students from graduating with the state requirements, that would probably be a bad thing.

I’m all for adding math and foreign language, though, which can do nothing but improve the students. Can’t economics be merged with the math somehow, which seems like a natural pairing?

Have you contacted your union rep.? If there is a grievance with the appropriation of required credits being aligned with local and state standards, your union should be involved.

@Skagg, the thought of a standardized national curriculum is scary idea.

*a

BTW According to the Dec 9th US News and World Report half of the high schools in our city (including mine) rank as gold or silver which means they are in the top 7% in the nation.

The only math educational administrators understand is Lowest Common Denominator.

An additional year of math is understandable. My school requires four years of math. Math is important. I hate it, but it’s important.

I took Spanish for five years, in a program of study that started in seventh grade. I cannot speak any Spanish whatsoever. Those five years of conjugating verbs in different tenses did nothing for me. And it isn’t just me. There are people I know taking AP Spanish this year, who don’t know the language, and they’re passing, because no one in the class can speak the language. I don’t think any foreign language should be required. It takes a really good teacher to teach a language effectively in a classroom setting.

My school requires two years of American history, as required by state law. I don’t see how one semester can be legal, or how all of American history can be covered in such a short time. Since it’s not legal, I don’t expect it will last long enough to be put into effect.

Right now it’s easy to say that economics is really important, and should be required, but the reality is that most people don’t really need to know about economics. I’d rather have less required courses and more electives, so that people who are planning to do something that will require knowledge of economics can take economics courses, and students who plan to do something that will require knowledge of biology can take biology classes.

Ultimately, I think the superintendent should have some ability to propose changes to the curriculum, as long as those changes reflect the will of parents. But violation of state law is something else entirely. I doubt the changes will be made, even if the school board votes for it, since it violates state law.

My high school has a banner hanging up above the entrance that says we were ranked in America’s “Top five percent” by some magazine. Turns out the way they calculated this was by looking at the number of students enrolled in AP classes (regardless of academic performance in that course) divided by the number of students in the graduating class. I’d take any kind of ranking like that with a grain of salt.

@pete: I think it’s important for everyone to understand basic economics. It was not taught when I was in high school, and I really wish it had been. Maybe if we all had a better understanding of economics, we wouldn’t be in quite the mess we’re in now.

Pete: Did you really take Calculus and Trig? Everybody uses economic education, or should…If you get into trouble with your credit cards, if you buy a car you can’t afford, all those people who took on interest only mortgages weren’t using simple economic principles. But who ever got into trouble because they didn’t know trigonometry?

I took a semester of French in third grade, three years of French in high school, and another semester of it in college.

I cannot speak French today, so I guess you could say that French class was useless to me, but only if you don’t allow for subtlety. Working in another language for a while gave me a boatload of insight into my own language (English) and into linguistics in general. It provides a kind of binocular vision that helps with languages in general – including other languages that I never took, like Spanish.

Also, in my job, I work with languages from all over the globe, from English to French to Polish to Indonesian. I don’t speak most of those, but I am expected to transcribe them quickly, with some idea of the content. My French experience, while not being fluent, is still a huge help in deciphering the general content of what I have to work with, even for languages like Czech and Turkish. If I had only one language in my head, it would look so much less decipherable.

Plus, learning another language (whether or not you retain it later) helps stretch the brain, and that cannot be a bad thing. You learn about some other people and the way they think. In a shrinking world, that is important.

Your new superintendent sounds a lot like the folks that work for our district. They have no idea of what is needed or even what might work. They just propose change because change is needed without considering whether it is the correct change that is needed.

Wonder how long he will last?

BTW, I took 4 years of Spanish in high school, “CLEP’d” out of Spanish 1 and 2 in college, took Spanish 3 and 4, and speak it fluently today. Of course, it could have been a help that I lived in Miami at the time and that I deliberately put myself in situations where I had to speak Spanish or go hungry.

I have also taken individual semesters of Mandarin Chinese, German, French, Portuguese, and Japanese and while I am not fluent in any of those I have enough that I can communicate with a lost and bewildered foreign tourist.

Well the board passed the new requirements last night. The new requirements will start with the class of 2014. I’m scheduled to retire the year they start Social Studies so a younger teacher will be able to keep his/her job.

Galileogirl: at the meeting, did they address how the new standards could supercede the standards of the state? did they address how the school could be in compliance without having the minimums in certain areas? do tell…..

ica: The changes were published the day of the meeting, This supt was hired this year and one of his pledges was to raise the high school graduation standards. Under the last two supes the overall test scores had risen in the city, with some schools doing very well and others lagging behind. (The reasons are obvious but too numerous to be addressed in tjis forum) We all want improvement for poorer performing students. My school was in the bottom half 13 years ago and with hard work, luck, and a principal who was a leader and advocate we have become a model school.

But to answer your question, with such short notice the only speakers scheduled were stooges.

it’s amazing that he could get away with lowering the requirements in the district. i don’t understand how the students would then be eligible for a diploma if they haven’t met the requirements of the state.

I was talking with a vice principal who said even the school administrators were not consulted. Poor leadership is a far greater problem in education than a few less than competent teachers. The question arises if this plan will even be implemented. It is supposed to start with next year’s 9th graders so the year that will not have economics is 2012–2013 and they will either get a state exemption or just fade away leaving bad feelings behind and the teachers still being blamed for student failure.

they always blame the teachers….

If anything, we should be adding to the curriculum. Maybe we should have a class about personal finance to where people aren’t learning to balance a checkbook after college. Maybe they learn how to claim different things on their taxes and about personal worth.

Maybe that would make too much sense?

@bodyhead: My guess is that it’s hard to add classes when schools are already cutting classes that they can’t afford anymore (like music) and teachers are having to skip so many other subjects so they can spend a couple months teaching to the tests so that no children are left behind…

If we have a curriculum that any idiot can pass… of course there will be no child left behind.