Concept: Curriculum Level / Academic Rigor

Introduction

This concept defines curriculum level / academic rigor and describes the methods used at the Manitoba Center for Health Policy (MCHP) to:


• classify the academic level of courses taken by a Manitoba high school student through grades 9 to 12 as:
  
  
  1. rigorous
     
  2. mid-level
     
  3. core
     
  4. below core
  
  
• classify schools according to what percentage of its students fall into which of the above curriculum level.

Definitions

Curriculum level, also known as academic rigor, is an indicator of the quality of academic achievement in high school (grades 9 to 12). Schools and individual students can be characterized based on their academic rigor. MCHP has looked at three methods to specify what curriculum level (rigorous, mid-level, core, or below core) an individual student has completed from grades 9 to 12 (see Step 1 below). Higher curriculum level is expected to indicate greater preparation for college or university level study. The academic rigor of a school is quantified by the amount of students that are taking a "rigorous" curriculum level as defined by MCHP researchers.

Methodology

A list of core subjects was compiled (by course number) using the 2001-02 and 2002-03 editions of the Manitoba Department of Education Publication, Subject Table Handbook - Student Records System & Professional School Personal System.

Students were included in the analyses if they:


• were enrolled in Grade 9 (i.e., S1) in the 1998 academic year (1998-1999 school year),
  
• remained in Manitoba for the next four years (to at least December 2002), and
  
• had attempted at least four Grade 12 level (S4) courses.

NOTE: The inclusion of only students who had completed at least four Grade 12 level courses was to better identify Grade 12 students and to restrict analyses to include only students who had at least attempted Grade 12. For each of these selected students, the high school marks dataset was then searched to obtain the set of courses taken during grades 9 to 12.

The following is a description of the steps and methods used at MCHP to classify students based on their curriculum level and to identify schools with high academic rigor.

Step 1: Evaluate Student Curriculum Level

The first step in determining academic rigor of a school is to classify students as having a (1) rigorous, (2) mid-level, (3) core, or (4) below core curriculum level over the four years of high school. There are several methods that can be used to categorize curriculum level; three are described below.

NOTE: Researchers at MCHP most frequently use the first method of defining curriculum levels.

Method 1

• Rigorous: At least four (4) grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with no more than one (1) year of Consumer Mathematics and at least one (1) year of PreCalculus Mathematics), AND at least one (1) year of Biology, AND at least one (1) year of Chemistry, AND at least one (1) year of Physics, AND at least one (1) year of another Language.
  
  
• Mid-level: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with at least one (1) year of PreCalculus Mathematics, or at least three (3) years of Applied Mathematics), AND three (3) or more grade levels of Science (including at least one of Biology, Chemistry, or Physics - rather than just three (3) levels of General Science).
  
  
• Core: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, plus at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics, plus two (2) or more grade levels of Science.
  
  
• Below Core: Four (4) or fewer grade levels of English, AND three (3) or fewer grade levels of Mathematics, AND two (2) or fewer grade levels of Science.

Method 2

• Rigorous: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with no more than one year of Consumer Mathematics), AND at least three (3) grade levels of Science (with at least three of the following four subjects: PreCalculus, Biology, Chemistry, or Physics), AND at least one grade level of another language, AND at least one International Baccalaureate (IB) or Advanced Placement (AP) course.
  
  
• Mid-level: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with at least one grade level of PreCalculus Mathematics, or at least three (3) grade levels of Applied Mathematics), AND four (4) or more grade levels of Science including at least one of Biology, Chemistry, or Physics).
  
  
• Core: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics, AND two (2) or more grade levels of Science.
  
  
• Below Core: Four (4) or fewer grade levels of English, AND three (3) or fewer grade levels of Mathematics, AND two (2) or fewer grade levels of Science.

Method 3

• Rigorous: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with at least two years of PreCalculus Mathematics and no more than one year of Consumer Mathematics), AND at least two grade levels of two of the Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, or Physics), AND at least one grade level of another language.
  
  
• Mid-level: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics (with at least one year of PreCalculus Mathematics, or at least three grade levels of Applied Mathematics), AND four (4) or more grade levels of Science (including at least one year of Biology, Chemistry, or Physics).
  
  
• Core: Four (4) or more grade levels of English, AND at least four (4) grade levels of Mathematics, AND two (2) or more grade levels of Science.
  
  
• Below Core: Four (4) or fewer grade levels of English, AND three (3) or fewer grade levels of Mathematics, AND two (2) or fewer grade levels of Science.

When all students are classified, compute what percentage of students fall into each of the four categories above, for each school.

Results

When calculated, the percentage of Grade 12 students who met the criteria for each level varied, depending on the method used.


• For example, 19.57% of Grade 12 students had a Rigorous curriculum level according to the third method; whereas, only 6.2% had a Rigorous curriculum level according to the more stringent second method.
• The percentage of Grade 12 students meeting Mid-Level curriculum level (but not higher) ranged from 32.8% (using the third method) to 50.3% (using the first method).
• The percentage of students meeting the Core curriculum level (but no higher) ranged from 29.7% (using the first method) to 36.7% (using the other two identical criteria).
• Because all three methods define the Below Core level category identically, 10.9% of Grade 12 students were categorized as Below Core, using all three methods.

NOTE: These numbers have never been published.

Step 2: Calculate the percent of students with a "rigorous" curriculum level

Calculate PROC UNIVARIATE of the variable pct_Rigorous_S4 over all schools to see the distribution of this variable. pct_Rigorous_S4 is the percent of students when they attended grade 12 at a particular school, who were determined to have had a rigorous course load over their four years of high school.

Step 3: Specify schools that have high academic rigor

Flag schools with more than the 75th percentile of the pct_Rigorous_S4 as schools which were ranked as "rigorous".

SAS Code

SAS programming code and listings (*.lst files) for all of the above was originally developed by Leonard MacWilliam. An example of the SAS code to work with curriculum level is available in the SAS code and formats section below (internal access only).

For Steps 2 & 3 see program: classify.schools.lst (scroll down to page 39 for PROC UNIVARIATE results - note: univariate analyses were restricted to only those schools with more than 20 "classified" students).

For these analyses 15.38% represented the 75th percentile - thus if a school had 15.38% or more of its students classified as "rigorous" the school was then identified as having "high academic rigor".

NOTE: this value (15.38%) will change depending upon the set of students and years these analyses are applied to and also depending upon what definition of rigorous / mid-level / core / below core is used.

Grades and Graduation Status

The curriculum level taken by Grade 12 students is related to their likelihood of high school (Grade 12) graduation, and to their cumulative grade average. For example, 65.1% of students who graduated from Grade 12 completed a Mid-level or higher curriculum level; whereas, only 5.2% of those who graduated Grade 12 were at the Below Core curriculum level. For students who withdrew from high school, 83.7% were at the Below Core level, and only 2.5% were Mid-level or higher. More strikingly, 0% were at a Rigorous curriculum level.

Those who took higher curriculum levels tended to achieve higher grades than did those who took lower curriculum levels. For example, 15.2% of graduates who had a Rigorous curriculum level achieved a cumulative average percentage over 90%; whereas, 4.3% of graduates at the Mid-level, 3.4% at the Core level, 1.2% at the Below Core level attained such high percentages.

NOTE: These numbers have never been published.

Note

At MCHP we can compute curriculum level for all students for whom we have their grade 9, grade 10, grade 11 & grade 12 course marks. Currently, given the most recent education data we have for high school course marks, we could potentially derive this curriculum level measure for students who started high school, (started grade 9) in 1996/97, 1997/98, 1998/99, 1999/00, 2000/01 or 2001/02, 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06, 2006/07.