William Tate Curriculum Quotations

Data analysis serves as a process that underpins scientific inquiry. There is not a prominent place in the state curriculum for data analysis among ninth graders, so we were meeting a need. Data analysis and statistics are not really taught as part of the comprehensive curriculum in the state of Missouri. We wanted to give the kids a chance to work with statistics. Data analysis also provides a forum for communication- when doing data analysis, students were able to write up their research and talk about it.

The ultimate goal was to raise the cognitive demand in the curriculum for urban school kids, which is important for future opportunities. Generally, test scores in math and science fall drastically between seventh and 10th grade. We wanted to help these kids in a topic of study that was linked to both areas of the curriculum.