EVERETT — As a Cascade High School freshman, Armando Lucas didn’t see himself taking high-level math as a senior.
The immigrant from Guatemala was just trying to slog through a first-year algebra course.
“I never thought I would be taking pre-calculus,” he said.
Yet that’s exactly what he’s doing his senior year.
Lucas is part of a growing trend in the Everett School District where enrollment in pre-calculus, calculus and statistics classes has more than tripled over the past five years. The number of students increased to 851 from 252 students during that time. That’s about a quarter of the juniors in the district.
The jump was not by accident.
Three years ago, the district added a third year of math to its graduation requirements that takes effect with this year’s junior class. For most students, that means taking at least a year of algebra beyond geometry. Many are choosing to venture beyond Algebra II.
“We had to break down a lot of beliefs that kids couldn’t do it,” said MaryAnn Stine, the district’s curriculum director.
At the same time, the district has been getting more middle school students to take algebra and geometry classes that were once just offered at high schools.
In 2004, there were no students in the district taking geometry in middle school; today there are 70. The number of students taking algebra in middle school rose to 774 from 384 during the same time span. Last year, nearly 60 percent of eighth graders completed first-year algebra and earned a high school math credit. By 2012, the goal is 85 percent.
At the high school level, the increased requirements have pushed students and their teachers.
Tom Lundberg, a math teacher for 28 years, has spent the past 16 at Cascade, including the last three years out of the classroom working with teachers and tutoring students.
He remembers years ago that students could graduate with two years of math without ever taking algebra.
When algebra became a requirement, it was scary for students and teachers, he said.
Now, teachers are learning to change their expectations, and, in many cases, instruction for students needing to take Algebra II.
With greater numbers taking higher level math, more are struggling to pass, he said.
“We need to be looking at how we teach,” Lundberg said. “It’s forcing teachers to look at things differently. What they did with the kids before might not work now, but in the big scheme of things, it is a good thing.”
Other school districts also are seeing more students taking more math classes through high school.
Two years ago, Stanwood High School added a college-level advanced placement statistics class for students who had taken calculus and exhausted the school’s math curriculum.
“As a high school, if we want to keep them here instead of going to (community college) Running Start, we have to relook at our math curriculum and offer everything we possibly can,” Principal Christine Gruver said.
Terry Edwards, the Everett School District’s chief academic officer, said the higher expectations in high school will save students headaches down the road, particularly if they go to community college or a four-year university.
“It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” he said.
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