IBM, Exxon, other businesses decry Texas retreat on tougher school math standards
When Texas in 2006 became the first state to require advanced algebra for high-school students, Governor Rick Perry said the policy would better prepare young people for success in higher education. The strategy worked: by 2011, local students who took advanced algebra had higher average test scores, and fewer graduates needed to enroll in remedial math classes in college. Seventeen other states followed suit, and now about 75 percent of U.S. high school students completed Algebra II in 2012, up from less than half in 1986, said Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a policy analyst at the Education Commission of the...
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