Add statistics to the list of Advanced Placement courses approved by the College Board.
The new college-level course will be piloted during the 1995-96 school year and introduced formally the following fall.
Designed to reflect the ever-increasing influence of computers, calculators, graphs, and charts, the A.P. statistics course will cover exploratory analysis, planning data production, probability, and statistical inference.
“You take the crunched numbers from calculators and computers and make inferences and draw conclusions that involve your everyday life, and this can be anything from how long a person drives a Volvo to the DNA odds in the O.J. Simpson case,” said Diane Resnick, one of the developers of the course and a teacher at Bellaire Senior High School in Houston.
“The course is going to show students just how relevant statistics and mathematics are to our lives, and also give them the critical eye to recognize generalities and missing parts,” she added.
Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF isn’t just for Halloween anymore. The 44-year-old program, which has raised more than $100 million for disadvantaged children worldwide, has expanded its focus throughout the month of October.
In addition to collecting money in orange-colored cartons for their peers in developing or war-torn nations, U.S. schoolchildren in 16 cities are being introduced to a multicultural program aimed at heightening global awareness.
UNICEF officials eventually hope to expand the program to districts nationwide.
The National Council of Teachers of English has launched a journal for the oft-forgotten middle and junior high school teachers.
Voices from the Middle, which debuted last month, will be published quarterly. It will explore topics in middle-level education and offer classroom theory and practices.
But its editors say they do not want it to be a how-to journal.
“I really want the theory and practice to coalesce and showcase classrooms where good theory is being implemented well,” Maureen Barbieri, a co-editor of the journal, told The Council Chronicle, another N.C.T.E. publication.
The first issue focused on adolescent literature. Future editions are expected to examine assessment, integrated curricula, and reading.
