The Long Beach Unified School District may soon modify its graduation requirements, mandating three — rather than four — years of math and adding a semester each of personal finance and ethnic studies.
New state laws mandate that districts require personal finance and ethnic studies. LBUSD officials say they’re relaxing the math requirement to allow students more flexibility while still meeting standards for entry to the University of California and Cal State University systems. If adopted, the math requirements will start with the class of 2027.
Lowering math requirements is a shift for LBUSD, which had been increasing them for years. Starting with the class of 2018, the district upped the math requirement from two years (the state standard) to three (in line with the state university system’s A-G requirements). For the graduating class of 2019, the district bumped the requirement again, requiring four years of math, the current standard.
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That increase was spurred in part because Long Beach City College “felt that having students complete four years would help with the transition into college-level math,” said Brian Moskovitz, the district’s chief academic officer. Since the changes, the proportion of LBUSD seniors ready for college increased 20 percentage points, EdSource previously reported…