Program of Study Concept

The image below shows a program of study, typically laid out in a Word Table.  This program of study plans out the classes a student needs to take to earn a high school diploma and be prepared to take science and engineering classes in College.

In the left, grey-colored column are the subjects.  For each subject, a number of units of course work are required.  Units are also called credits and are assigned to each course.  Sometimes these requirements are just describes as "years" of a subject.  Across the header row are the years of study. High School is a 4-year degree, starting with 9th grade.  Each year is broken in to two terms, or grading periods.   The specific classes the student must take are shown in the rows as green or blue blocks.  This table is able to show in which term the class must be taken, as many classes have a sequence. The planning process aims to distribute the work load rather evenly over the multiple years.

Above each row where the classes are shown is the text description of the requirements. For example, the "a-g" requirement is 4 years of English and the "NCAA" requirement is 4 years of English.  "a-g" is a short way to describe college entrance requirements, and NCAA is a short way to describe college sports league requirements.  In the US there are multiple organizations that establish high school graduation requirements that are above and beyond what is established by the jurisdiction.  Depending on a student's future college or career plan, their high school degree must be able to meet their specific needs.  One student may not need to meet any of theses requirements if they are not planning to go to college, another may need to only meet "a-g" if they are planning to go to college but not play sports, another may need to also meet NCAA if they want to go to college and play sports.

The complexity of meeting these requirements for each individual student falls to the school counselors.  School counselors meet with students individually, understand the objectives, and help them plan their classes.  Then the student selects their courses for the term.  The counselor must then monitor compliance, ensuring students are completing to the plan.  This is very labor intensive.  PEMS is designed to automate these processes and reduce the need for the school counselors.

At the bottom of the image you see a table showing the total years in each subject area. The various organization requirements are totaled. If a student completes this course plan, then the student will have complied with the various organization's requirements.