The calculations behind UC's math admissions standards - Part 3 (Is That Clear!)

We recently blogged about BOARS last-minute shift on math admissions standards. What has emerged as a clarification isn't all that clear.

From EdSource: The flashpoint was the approval by a Senate faculty committee, called BOARS, crediting data science courses that included minimum math for satisfying Algebra II. Faced with criticism that students taking them would be unprepared for harder courses and a major in STEM in college, BOARS changed its mind at a meeting last Friday, and withdrew the Algebra II credit. Without disclosing that decision, the chair wrote to the state board, asking that it delete references in the framework that tied data science to Algebra II.

Breaking the silence, the executive director of the UC Faculty Senate partially clarified the confusion Wednesday in a statement to Darling-Hammond, which she read. It said, in part, “There’s been continued discussion about the adequacy of a small number of data science courses, not data science broadly, in the context of our systemwide student preparedness expectations.” The statement said BOARS would establish a working group “to examine the criteria that determine whether a course is considered advanced math and to draft a charge for their undertaking over the coming months.” Meanwhile, the university “will still recognize the existing advanced math courses approved to fulfill the subject requirement,” including data science, “for this year’s applicants to the university.”

The two most popular data science courses that grant credit for Algebra II and are taught in several hundred high schools are Introduction to Data Science, designed by UCLA Statistics Professor Rob Gould, and Explorations in Data Science  by YouCubed, an organization established by Jo Boaler, a Stanford University math education professor and one of the authors of the original framework. Various speakers praised both at the meeting.

The process of approving curriculum materials for the new framework, which will have to be written from scratch, could take two years or longer. Meanwhile, teachers are awaiting word on a rollout of training... The Department of Education ​​has not yet released plans [for such training].  

Full story at https://edsource.org/2023/state-board-of-education-passes-new-california-math-curriculum/693990.