BATON ROUGE — High school students who want to earn state-funded Taylor Opportunity Program for Students scholarships soon could have to take much tougher classes.
The House Education Committee agreed Tuesday with Rep. Hollis Downs, R-Ruston, that "far and away, the leading predictor of success in higher education is the core curriculum."
Under Downs' amended HB1399, students who apply for TOPS in 2014 would have to have completed the "Core 4" curriculum. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education created the curriculum requiring four years each of math, science, social studies and English, as well as two years of the same foreign language and fine arts survey or a performance course.
