A Pilot Standard National Course Classification System for Secondary Education

This publication is the culmination of a major effort to help establish a common terminology, descriptions, and coding structure for course information at the secondary level of education. There had previously been no standard system for collecting, maintaining, reporting, and exchanging comparable information about student course taking patterns. The system was derived using material from five states. Two other states (Virginia and South Dakota) were chosen to test the proposed system. Study staff considered all courses within the course catalogs of selected school systems in these states, but concentrated on the four major academic subject areas (English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies) and the three vocational subject areas with the largest enrollments (business and office occupations, vocational and home economics, and agricultural occupations). The proposed system contains 632 courses in 29 subject areas. Every course has a title, description, and basic course title code. Additional fields allow for more detailed information. Examples are given, and subject fields and codes are listed. Seventeen tables present coding information. Appendixes contain numeric and alphabetic lists of codes and titles, as well as a list of participating agencies. (SLD)