De Soto High School students have noticed that there will be some changes made to courses offered at DHS due to the new State Standards and curriculum revisions.

Last year, Ali Shaffer started her first year at DHS and also started the new Animation curriculum offered with the Career in Technical Education courses. CTE courses are trade skill courses, like journalism and computer-oriented courses.

After the first year, there were 10 students that wanted to continue with animation and an unofficial “Animation II” class was created. With the class, students gained a larger knowledge of Adobe Flash CS4 and some of its advanced features.

The main reason that Animation will no longer will be offered is because it is a “pathway course,” and under the current setting animation stood alone without an introductory class and two application classes to complete the “pathway.”

“The funding is currently unavailable to the district to hire more teachers to complete the pathway so we can continue animation,” Principal Mark Meyer said. “This does not mean that Animation will not come back, but it is currently not an option that we can keep.”

Shaffer will still teach animation in her Computer Graphics class, but the course will only touch base with Adobe Flash and the rest of the course will be heavily oriented within computer graphics.

Not only have CTE courses been revised, but the math courses are also being changed in order to accommodate with the Common Core Standards.

“Essentially we are getting rid of the current math structures and creating Integrated Math 1, 2 and 3 to replace Algebra, Geometry and Algebra 2,” Meyer said.

These Common Core standards make courses work by a transcontinental curriculum on a national level, which means that students in California are working on the same material as students in Kansas.

Common Core could also effect graduation requirements, setting a requirement for every high school student in the United States. This would also transition to the college level making it easier for students because they have been taught the same course; no matter what school they have attended.

Sophomores, juniors and seniors will also have to sign a contract to enroll in the Advance Placement and the Pre-AP courses offered by DHS. This will bind the student to the course making it so they cannot drop the class.

This will decrease the amount of students dropping AP courses, and it will weed out the students who are not prepared for a college course or AP test at the end of the year.

Common Core and the school board will continue to mandate course availability and standards for years to come, starting with changes that will take effect during the next school year.