Graduation Requirements

Nevada high school students who pass the high school proficiency exam and maintain a 3.25 grade point average can earn a $10,000 Millennium Scholarship to Nevada’s state universities.

But the bar for those state scholarships, as it turns out, is not set very high. Many of those scholarship recipients are among the 34 to 38 percent of entering freshmen at UNLV who are judged in need of remedial math and English courses before launching their college careers.

In an effort to trim those remediation rates, the state Board of Regents decided in December to grant Millennium Scholarships only to those Nevada students who have completed four years of mathematics in high school. That requirement will apply to kids who are currently high school freshmen and sophomores.

So, last week, in order to keep as many kids as possible eligible for the state scholarships, the Clark County School Board followed the lead set by the Washoe County board last fall, voting 5-0 to increase its diploma requirements by an additional math and an additional science class. Students must now take three years of science and four years of math to graduate.

That sounds good. But, as ever, the devil is in the details.

Those who earned their high school diplomas more than 35 years ago might assume “three years of science” – especially for the college bound – means biology, chemistry and physics, and that “four years of math” would advance a child through geometry and trigonometry.

Not necessarily. Under the new and more “stringent” requirements, graduates will now have to complete algebra II, where previously only algebra I was required. A veteran math teacher explains this is because “They’ve taken courses that you might call ‘playing with blocks’ and re-named them ‘pre-algebra,’ ” while meantime, “every time we add something we lose more rigor; back in the ’90s they just about wiped out all the proofs in geometry.”

Students will now also be required to take biology before graduating – not chemistry or physics, apparently.

And parents will have the option of signing a waiver – which must be OK’d by a school principal or administrator – exempting their individual children from the more “rigorous” requirements.

The district does seem to have come a ways, at least, from the day when “wood shop” counted as a mathematics course.

The process of “toughening up graduation requirements” can seem to resemble a slow walk up the “down” escalator. But the School Board is to be congratulated for continuing to try. It’s an increasingly competitive world out there, and the excuse that “I had an at-risk childhood” doesn’t go very far.

Real self-esteem comes from real achievement, and real achievement isn’t very likely unless kids are challenged.

(c) 2007 Las Vegas Review – Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.