In line with the new common core standards adopted by the state, the Wake County school system will implement new math course names and sequencing for the 2012-13 school year.

During Tuesday's school board meeting, staff laid out how the new math sequencing, which in middle school would be used with EVAAs to place students, would look. Staff also gave new data that could put a different spin on the arguments used by critics who've said that using an EVAAS predictor score of below 80 percent is too low.

All five member school districts of the Triangle High Five are supposed to use the same sequencing and course names.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF REPORT FOR LINKS TO HANDOUTS

The days of flats, skinnies and bits will soon be coming to an end in Wake's elementary schools.

As noted in today's article, a textbook selection committee of parents, teachers and principals has recommended using Math Expressions as the new K-5 math textbook. The committee didn't recommend using an updated version of the controversial Math Trailblazers textbook that introduced parents to terms such as flats and skinnies.

The new textbook is billed as offering a more traditional approach to teaching math while including some of the concepts of Trailblazers.

^{Most reporters are not mathematicians.}

^{I certainly am not. That is why I ask questions when it comes to stories involving those pesky numbers that made me cringe in college. Recently, I spoke to a Johnston County town manager to get clarification on estimates involving a water project.}

^{After a few minutes, the town manager obviously seemed annoyed with me. I guess my math skills were not clicking as fast as he would have liked. His tone of voice changed, he sighed loudly several times over the telephone and made a remark that he could not have explained it any easier to me.}

^{Sorry, but I did not go to college to become a math whiz. Numbers take me a little bit longer to comprehend than vowels and nouns. I could have just gone on my assumptions, printed the numbers and got everything wrong. But instead, I went straight to the source, asked a few questions, got the right information and wrote my story.}

^{I guess the town manager didn’t see it that way.}