STEM and Algebra 2

As school board members, we are responsible for approving curriculum. One thing we are struggling with is how to make room for more basic stats and basic data science within our existing curriculum sequences. My question is this: Algebra 2 is tough for a lot of people and seems to teach some topics that even many (not all) STEM people will not use. Recall that STEM is not just Engineering and Comp Sci. It includes Biology, Chemistry, Big Data, Analytics, and more. Why do we need to push high schoolers through a sequence of Alg 1 > Geo > Alg 2 before teaching basic Stats and basic Data Science? If Alg 2 is truly needed, it can be taken later, right? It seems like we are doing it this way just because we've always done it this way.

Submitted January 12, 2023 at 07:07AM by Series_G https://ift.tt/FZDKMde