Advertisement CSU faculty urges 4 years of math for HS students High school students only required to take 3 years of math Share Shares Copy Link Copy

In the not-too-distant future, high school students bound for a California State University campus who thought they could slide through their senior year without taking a math course might instead be hitting the books.CSU's Academic Senate, which represents faculty at all 23 campuses in the system, approved a resolution this spring calling for entering freshmen to take four years of high school math, rather than the current three.Worried that "mathematics skills decline with a lack of practice," the resolution recommends that during their final year of high school, students take a course in mathematics or some other "quantitative reasoning" course like statistics, computer science or coding that helps students create computer software.The challenge was even singled out in the state budget that lawmakers approved this month. The spending plan includes $3 million for a competition to encourage development of a course to help high school seniors prepare for college-level math through a yearlong, senior-level course.The new course would be the math equivalent of a fourth-year "Expository Reading and Writing" class offered in more than 800 California high schools and taken by approximately 80,000 students each year."We've seen real differences in students who took math every year (in high school) from those who didn't," said outgoing Academic Senate Chairman Steven Filling, a professor of accounting at Cal State, Stanislaus.The need for more math preparation is evident from CSU figures. Last fall, 27 percent of entering freshmen, or 17,653 students, needed remedial or developmental courses in mathematics. Almost the same number had not taken a fourth year of high school math.The University of California system also is looking at math requirements. But Ralph Aldredge, chairman of the system's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, said the issue isn't as urgent because roughly 93 percent of UC freshman applicants for fall 2014 took at least four years of high school math."We have no significant motivation for making a change," Aldredge said.The next step for CSU is to get the approval of Chancellor Timothy White and then the CSU Board of Trustees. That could happen by the end of the year, though actual implementation could be one or two years away.Ken O'Donnell, CSU's senior director of student engagement, is optimistic the change will come."It feels like the momentum around this is real," he said.The proposal has gotten strong support from the chancellor's office. In a letter to the Academic Senate, CSU Dean Leo Van Cleve said, "We agree that requiring students to take a fourth year of math while in high school is in the interest of student success."At the same time, Van Cleve expressed concern about what effect the extra requirement would have on "our most vulnerable students." He worried, for example, whether poorer high schools would be able to provide the resources and instruction students would need to take the fourth-year course.Vicki Vierra, president of the California Mathematics Council, representing 8,500 teachers and administrators, said her organization would support a fourth year of math but that students should have a number of options beyond just traditional math classes."If the class is only pre-calculus, I'm not sure we could support it," Vierra said. "We'd support other options, especially statistics, since it seems to be useful throughout one's life."