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As you may know, the State Board of Education recently approved an updated version of the California Math Framework that increases the emphasis on data science throughout K-12 and explicitly includes data science courses in high school. At the same time, the University of California's faculty-led Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) raised questions about the role of data science under area C of the a-g guidelines. In particular, they noted concerns about whether data science courses can be considered advanced math courses and continue to be used as an alternative to Algebra II (i.e., "validate" Algebra II).  Here is the latest guidance from UC.

This ongoing debate among our public universities and our K-12 system is understandable given how new Data Science courses are to the math landscape.  

We want to make a couple of points of clarification and reassure our hard-working teachers, counselors, administrators and, in particular, our students and families.

First of all, nothing has changed for the 2023-24 school year (see the latest correspondence from UC here). Whether you are using CourseKata (or another Data Science curriculum) for a third-year math course (as an alternative to Algebra II) or as a third- or fourth-year advanced math course (with Algebra II or Math III as a prerequisite), the UC policy for a-g has not changed.

Second, the BOARS will appoint a working group over the next month to look more deeply at the issue of what constitutes an advanced math course and what courses in addition to Algebra II meet the third-year requirement. The working group will make recommendations back to BOARS for consideration for future school years. The CourseKata team will closely monitor the work of the group and be proactive in assisting them as much as possible.

CourseKata courses fit the requirements of a Statistics course (thus the name Statistics and Data Science), and that is how they appear on a student’s transcript. Statistics has been approved as an advanced math course across the UC and CSU systems for at least a decade and we don’t anticipate that changing. To better understand the history and current debate, we encourage you to read a recent blog post by Pam Burdman at JustEquations.org.  

Our courses meet the Statistics standards with a strong emphasis on modeling with functions and integrating modern programming approaches. Of all the data science courses, our unique emphasis on the importance of functions provides a motivation for students to pursue learning more advanced functions in courses such as Algebra II or Pre-Calculus.

CourseKata's textbooks align to three distinct courses under area C to meet the needs of our high school and districts: 

• Advanced Statistics and Data Science I (with Algebra II or the equivalent as a prerequisite)

• Statistics and Data Science I (Algebra I and Geometry or the equivalent as prerequisites)

• Statistics and Data Science II (the second course in a sequence with SDS I or AP Statistics as prerequisites)

These “program courses” have been approved by UC in the a-g portal so districts can simply drag and drop those course descriptions and approvals into their course listings.

Please get in touch if you have further questions or concerns at info@coursekata.org.  We look forward to another great year of inspiring students with Statistics and Data Science.