For the first time in its 17-year history, every eighth grader inside Center City Public Charter School’s Congress Heights campus completed Algebra I last school year. And a full 70% scored proficient on statewide assessments in 2024-25.

Just 25% of all D.C. students and 64% of those in wealthy Ward 3 scored the same. Ward 8 as a whole lagged dramatically, with just 15% of children meeting or exceeding the math proficiency benchmark.

The Congress Heights school serves 251 students pre-K through 8: 98% are Black and 60% receive government assistance for food and/or housing. 

Principal Niya White came on board in 2012, when the school was slated to be closed by the because of a poor school culture and student performance, she said. 

“This is one of those turnaround stories no one ever expected to come to fruition,” White said. “By just the demographics, not too many people expect our students to be able to win and show up in the ways that they do.”

The victory comes after years of reassessing how and when math standards would be taught, White said, and making sure the students were prepared.

“We extended the school year last summer for four weeks to get students ready,” White said. “We finished the accelerated learning by merging their seventh- and eighth-grade standards to make sure they completed all course work prior to starting Algebra I to guarantee we weren’t moving forward with any gaps.”

Eighth-grade access to Algebra I is critical because it sets students up for higher-level math in 12th grade. This is particularly helpful for those who seek to study STEM in college, hoping to land a job in a high-paying field. 

The Congress Heights campus has tracked these eighth graders’ scores as they moved through elementary and into the higher grades. In 2019-20, third graders there scored in the 68th percentile on the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, math exam, a computer-adaptive assessment designed to measure students’ growth over time. 

These children did not take the test as fourth graders because of the COVID closures, but their fifth-grade scores — they reached only the 49th percentile — reveal what was lost. 

This group has made steady improvements in the years since: they reached the 60th percentile in math in 2022-23 and the 85th in 2023-24 and 2024-25.  

The Congress Heights school is one of six in the , which serves 1,440 children in total. 

Jessi Mericola, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math, spanning everything from interest rates to algebra, credited several factors for the school’s success, including her prior knowledge of students’ ability in addition to relatively small class sizes — a maximum of 25 children.

The Congress Heights campus also uses a co-teaching model for math, which Mericola said allows her and her co-teacher to better serve all students’ needs. 

Oftentimes, she said, one educator stands at the classroom whiteboard to impart lessons while the other identifies and helps struggling students in small groups or individually. 

The setup, Mericola said, allows the adults in the room to spot-tutor kids who have trouble catching on, their struggle made obvious by the quizzical looks on their faces.

“Those are the things you would notice and pick up on,” Mericola said. 

Kennedy Morse, 13, and in this year’s eighth-grade class, was once one of those puzzled kids. She is now thriving in a subject that used to elude her. 

“Before I came to Center City, math was something I struggled with,” she said. “I didn’t have proper guidance. Now, it’s one of my strongest subjects.”

Principal White said the school’s success hinged in part on a change in attitude about students’ ability. She and other educators recognized the profound impact COVID had on learning but didn’t want to treat these children as if they were incapable of mastering on-grade tasks. 

“If we kept saying the students aren’t going to be able to do something, then we will never be able to move them forward,” White said.

Rather than fret about what they lacked, she said, the school decided to simply teach the material, progressing students through the curriculum while also plugging in what they had missed.

“We can’t hold somebody back because they don’t have all of their multiplication facts through 25 memorized,” White said. “That is not the answer or the way.” 

Students, as evidenced by their test scores, are meeting the challenge. 

White said, too, the school gives teachers the time they need to plan lessons that permit for this. 

And, she said, the Congress Heights campus runs on data, assessing students’ knowledge throughout the school year, starting shortly after the bell rings: Math teachers frequently begin their lessons with two questions. Sometimes, it’s a measure of what students learned the day before. Other times, it’s a preview of a lesson to come. From this simple exercise, teachers learn whether they need a quick review or if they can forge ahead. 

And the data collection is not solely focused on academics. Josh Boots, founder and executive director of Empower K12, a nonprofit that supports data collection and analysis for both charter and traditional D.C. public schools, said the Congress Heights campus uses all manner of metrics to learn if what they are doing is working. 

For example, Boots said, when the school began using to shuttle kids in high-crime areas to and from campus starting in the 2024-25 school year, they didn’t simply make the program available: They checked to see if safe passage actually improved attendance. 

Money was limited for the program so not all eligible students were able to use it. But, Boots said, those who did had seven more days of school attendance last year and 12 fewer late arrivals than the students who didn’t have access to the program.��

“It is critical,” Boots said of the data the school tracks. “It helps us know how students are feeling and doing on a regular basis. We can sometimes see it but the harder data confirms it — or doesn’t confirm it.”

He said, too, school leaders know they are not going to solve every problem right away. 

“But we need to be able to fail forward,” he said, quoting White. “We need to know as quickly as possible that something is — or is not — working, so we can change and improve so that every student gets the opportunities they deserve.” 

And, Principal White said, all of the math lessons are video recorded so students can go back and review their teacher’s instructions. 

“They have a play list for every lesson,” she said, adding students can also retake some in-classroom tests to improve their scores. “If they got a 60 on their first try, that 60 doesn’t stand. They can go back for the week, redo it, ask questions and use videos to see what (they) got wrong and resubmit it to make the grade higher.”

White said, too, the school addresses the math mindset at the start of the school year so students don’t begin their classes convinced they can’t succeed. 

“We make sure they know in order to be a math person you just have to be a person and manipulate math,” she said. “That really does get them out of their own way, especially if they are coming to us new. If you do math, and you’re a person, you are a math person.”

When it comes to public policy, there are rarely any easy solutions, but there is one lever states can pull that will ensure more students have access to math courses that will improve their long-term success in life.  

has shown that a student’s math achievement has a stronger correlation with future income than gains in reading or even health-related factors. And one of the most important predictors of future math success is a student’s “” — especially when it comes to Algebra I, a critical gateway course.

While most students take Algebra I or integrated math in ninth grade, many could take it earlier. But there is the catch: Access to Algebra I in middle school, which is considered advanced, is often determined by a variety of metrics including teacher recommendations, parental wishes, grades and GPA.  These factors don’t always reflect a student’s true readiness, and they can unintentionally limit access for students who are prepared to take on advanced math before high school.   

Several states — including Indiana, Nevada North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington — have taken a different approach. They’ve implemented a policy called “Guaranteed Access to Advanced Math” that allows students who score highly proficient on state exams to enroll automatically into advanced math pathways that lead to Algebra I in middle school. This policy is grounded in mathematical readiness and shows that it is the best indicator of Algebra I success.��

Beyond ensuring all students who are ready for advanced math have access to those courses, research indicates this policy is opening more doors for vulnerable students who might otherwise be excluded. 

from The E3 Alliance found that before the state adopted its “Guaranteed Access to Advanced Math Policy,” Black students in Central Texas who scored in the top 20% of their fifth-grade class in math were less likely to be placed in Algebra I by eighth grade than their Black peers who ranked in the 21st through 40th percentile In other words, some of the highest-achieving students were overlooked, not because they weren’t mathematically ready but because the system wasn’t designed to guarantee them access. 

For schools that implemented a guaranteed access to advanced math policy, enrollment in Algebra I in middle school rose significantly across all student groups. After changing the architecture of math classes so Algebra I became the default for students with high test scores, top-performing Black and Hispanic students’ access to Algebra I in grade 8 moved from 33% and 46% respectively to a whopping . The policy also boosted enrollment for top-performing White and Asian students from 75% and 90% respectively to 83% and 92%.�� 

Nationally, remain below pre-pandemic levels, and are testing at levels close to where they were in 2000. If we want to reverse this decline — and prepare students for the higher-paying jobs and in-demand college majors that depend on advanced math — we need policies like “Guaranteed Access to Advanced Math” that raise expectations and expand opportunity.��

Right now, the approach isn’t consistent across the country.  Only Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Washington now have statewide guaranteed access policies, with Indiana and Virginia joining during the 2025-26 school year.  

Other strategies have missed the mark. San Francisco delayed Algebra I until ninth grade to “level the playing field” but ended up who were mathematically ready to accelerate. Minnesota required all eighth graders to take Algebra I, which ignored individual student readiness and .��

Guaranteed access offers a better path. It meets students where they are, supports those who need more time and accelerates those who are mathematically ready. It’s optional, not required, so parents make the final decision whether their students are enrolled in advanced coursework in middle school.  

Under ExcelinEd’s mathematically ready students would take Algebra I in middle school, and students who need time to build a strong mathematical foundation will take Algebra I in ninth grade. This ensures every student completes Algebra I by the end of ninth grade, taking the course when they are mathematically ready.��

The outcomes are measurable. Students who take more advanced math are more likely to , and . When guaranteed access policies are designed well, they help close by making sure readiness drives opportunity.��

No single policy solution can overcome America’s math challenges. States also need : high-quality instructional materials, at least 60 minutes a day of math instruction and strong support for teachers. But with guaranteed access as part of that foundation, we can ensure that every student, regardless of where they start, has the opportunity to learn and leverage the advanced math skills that power our workforce.��

One critical inflection point is the completion of Algebra I. It can determine whether students move forward or fall behind, shaping not just their academic trajectory but also their future economic mobility. For students who pass Algebra I — typically in 9^th grade — a door opens to higher-level math, college readiness, and stronger career prospects. For those who don’t, that door can remain closed. In fact, students who fail Algebra I are to drop out of high school than their peers who pass. 

According to the 2024 NAEP scores, were proficient in 8^th grade math. That sobering number underscores the challenge: Students are entering Algebra I already behind, grappling with unfinished learning from prior grades. Without effective intervention, the gap only grows wider.

To better understand how to support students in mastering Algebra I, TNTP and New Classrooms analyzed three years of data from more than 2,000 students who used Teach to One Roadmaps, an online learning platform developed by New Classrooms, alongside their regular Algebra I classroom. 

The findings, detailed in the report, , offer important insights into how students build algebraic understanding over time and which strategies are most effective in helping them succeed.

The study found that students make the most progress when rebuilding foundational knowledge is paired with opportunities to learn new content. That requires focusing on high-leverage, pre-requisite skills rather than trying to fill every gap. Intervention supports like tutoring must be tightly aligned to what students already know and what they are ready to learn next. And instructional coherence is essential. Students need consistent, connected learning experiences — from core instruction to other interventions — to truly accelerate.

The majority of students in the study began knowing only about one-third of the algebra-related concepts and skills from prior grades. But the data also showed that students can catch up — especially when instruction helps them both rebuild key foundations and continue learning new, grade-level material. They don’t need to stop moving forward while trying to recover everything they’ve missed. 

The research found that instruction was significantly more effective when it targeted the key predecessor skills that unlock access to new Algebra I content, rather than attempting to remediate everything. For example, when students are trying to learn “the average rate of change,” the key predecessor skills with the greatest likelihood of ensuring success are the ability to calculate the slope between two points, to construct functions to model a linear relationship, and to determine function rules from tables. When key skills like these are not already mastered, students were found to succeed in only one out of 10 attempts. But when they are explicitly addressed, students’ success rate jumped to 58%.

The takeaway: Students don’t need to catch up on all unfinished learning to move forward. Precision matters more than breadth. Instead of broad, generalized approaches, educators can accelerate learning by focusing on the skills that matter most for unlocking new content and that build on each student’s existing knowledge.

Over the course of a school year, aligning interventions with core instruction also made a measurable difference. This targeted strategy helped students learn nearly twice as many new algebra concepts by year end. That progress mattered: Students who had mastered twice as many concepts were significantly more likely to score proficient on their state’s Algebra I assessment.

These insights point to a larger truth: System-level is essential. Students thrive when their learning experiences—from core instruction to tutoring to other supports—are aligned, purposeful, and grounded in a shared understanding of what success looks like. In Algebra I, for example, instructional coherence ensures that the foundational skills students practice in tutoring or support programs directly connect to what’s being taught in class, so every learning opportunity builds toward mastering key algebra concepts rather than feeling disconnected or repetitive.

If schools are to serve as true engines of opportunity, all parts of the system—curriculum, instruction, and intervention—must work together. That’s especially true when it comes to Algebra I, the gateway course that often determines who accelerates and who stalls out. Coherence isn’t just about what happens in the math classroom; it requires alignment across grade levels, teacher teams, and entire systems.

When selecting intervention solutions, district leaders should ask key questions: How does the platform determine what each student is ready to learn? Does it tailor practice to individual needs? The most effective tools meet students where they are and guide them towards mastery, with a clear focus on skills that unlock Algebra I.

At the state level, much of the recent focus has rightly been on ensuring rigorous classroom curricula. But few states offer clear guidance on what high-quality intervention should look like. This is a missed opportunity. State leaders can leverage existing curriculum review processes to advocate for coherent intervention tools: ones that are aligned to classroom instruction, address unfinished learning, and build towards grade-level content.

Algebra I is more than just a math class. It’s a defining moment in a student’s academic life and a powerful measure of whether the school system is delivering on its promise of opportunity. Right now, too many students are stalling before they ever get a chance to accelerate. But we now have a clearer roadmap for helping them catch up—and keep up. 

The tools are here. The knowledge is here. The opportunity is waiting. Let’s make sure the engine starts.

A attempts to untangle the policy pendulum swings and provide states and districts with concrete evidence for what’s most effective. But to really understand what’s at stake, consider a history lesson  – more a cautionary tale, really – set in San Francisco schools.

Nationally, only 16% of eighth-grade students took Algebra I in the mid-80s — and as one might imagine, the well-resourced schools that offered the advanced math subject in middle school overwhelmingly catered to wealthy white students. The 90s was marked by efforts to address those inequities and increase access to Algebra I, which was seen as a gateway to academic success and college access but one that often . 

Swept up in California’s “Algebra for All” push in the late 1990s, San Francisco schools shifted away from placing high-achieving students on advanced math tracts and attempted to enroll all eighth-graders in Algebra I. But the results were lackluster at best. By significantly increasing enrollment, including students who were not academically prepared for the subject, achievement plummeted. Some research even suggests a harmful backsliding for the lowest-performers, who often had to repeat the course. 

So, San Francisco course-corrected once again. In 2015, they rolled out new and rigorous math standards, but took away the ability for students to take Algebra I in eighth-grade, making it a ninth-grade subject. Then, after a wave of criticism from parents fearing their kids weren’t being challenged or properly prepared for more advanced mathematics, they reintroduced Algebra I to eighth-graders this year, piloting three different ways of offering the subject in middle school to pinpoint the most effective way to do so. 

San Francisco isn’t alone in its Algebra I pendulum swings — not by a long shot. Today, the subject has become a bellwether for equity and college access, and unexpectedly, one of the most hotly debated topics in American education. 

With district and school leaders clamoring for more meaningful guidance about who should take the class, when, and with what types of support, a new report from and the tackles those issues head-on.

“Over the past few decades, the research that has come out of those policy swings — from everyone should take it in eighth grade to no, we should make everyone take it in ninth grade — has kind of shown that that one-size-fits-all uniform push to algebra one is not meeting the needs of all students,” says Elizabeth Huffaker, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis and author of the report. “A lot of states and districts are experimenting with new models, and we wanted to bring to bear what we do know as states and districts try to do that.”

Here’s what the report found and what state, district and school leaders should examine as they think about the most effective ways to set students up for success with Algebra I and beyond. 

How to Determine Algebra Readiness

In deciding who should take algebra, districts should attempt to strike a balance between expanding early access to the subject in 8th grade and ensuring students are academically ready. The goal should be to broaden participation while preventing course failure, disengagement, and long-term setbacks. 

shows that long-term academic success is higher when students are enrolled in Algebra I based on academic readiness rather than grade level. But whether schools should embrace acceleration among students with uncertain readiness depends on the level of academic support a district can provide as well as the proportion of students considered borderline ready. Enrolling too many students who aren’t fully ready can be disruptive and ineffective, whereas a small number who are also bolstered by tutoring programs, for example, would likely be successful.

Students who are not academically ready need significant support to be successful.

When it comes to making placement decisions, shows the best way to do so is with a combination of test scores, rather than relying solely on subjective referrals or a single test score. This has been shown to improve participation and achievement, especially for historically underserved students. For example, when schools in Wake County, North Carolina, replaced subjective placement factors with a cutoff score based on multiple academic measures, it led to increased enrollment, especially among Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. 

Tracking v. Mixed Classrooms

“Tracking,” the practice of assigning students to courses based on their proficiency level, is controversial since it assumes students have fixed academic abilities. That’s a narrative that’s particularly harmful for low-income students and students of color who come into K-12 with far less access to advanced coursework. 

Yet the practice is widespread, especially in older grades and for placement in advanced classes: Nationally, about 25% of 4th graders and 75% of 8th graders attend schools that use tracking. Supporters argue that it improves learning by targeting instruction to students’ individual needs, and seems to bear that out, with classrooms grouped by proficiency levels allowing more targeted instruction.

However, research also shows that tracking tends to benefit higher achievers while also widening achievement gaps and increasing segregation. Moreover, students in lower tracks are typically aware of their placement, which can hurt confidence, motivation and effort. 

Meanwhile, mixed-proficiency classrooms offer all students access to rigorous coursework, but risk discouraging lower achievers by introducing material that’s too advanced while also slowing progress for high achievers because the material isn’t advanced enough. And while differentiated instruction can benefit all students, effectively supporting a wide range of academic abilities requires teachers to have advanced skills.

Evidence-Based Strategies to Help Kids Catch Up

The best approach is to provide extra support to students who aren’t quite ready for algebra through tutoring, offering two periods of math each day (also known as “double-dose”) or providing summer programs, research shows. 

Tutoring, especially when delivered in small groups, multiple times per week, and during the school day, is one of the most effective short-term and long-term academic interventions. A of 21 randomly controlled trials found that math tutoring generates about a 10 percentile learning gain, on average, which is a large effect for an educational intervention. 

“Double-dose” algebra gives students two math periods a day and has been shown to improve outcomes. When Chicago Public Schools required underprepared 9th-grade students to take two periods of algebra instead of one, student test scores increased. It also led to longer-run gains in college entrance exam scores, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates.

also shows that summer bridge programs help students build the study skills and confidence needed for success in algebra. One 19-day Algebra I bridge program in California raised the share of algebra-ready students from 12% to 29%.

Where to Go From Here

Increasing enrollment in Algebra I in middle school involves nuanced decision-making that includes evaluating the readiness of students and educators and the capacity of the district to provide support.

What districts should avoid, the research shows, are policy shifts that either delay Algebra I for all students or accelerate them without strong, integrated support, and enrollment policies that rely on one static test score or subjective teacher recommendations.

“There should be an emphasis on raising the floor, not lowering the ceiling when we’re thinking about balancing access and achievement,” Huffaker says. 

Most recently, districts have been turning to auto-enrollment policies, which allow students to opt out and support those who may not be academically ready with either tutoring or a second math class. Research shows that it increases participation and completion rates, particularly among underrepresented students. 

Bottom line, Huffaker says, is that there are always going to be trade-offs when it comes to how and when to introduce Algebra I. 

“We always say that supported acceleration is a great way to get all or most of your students on an advanced pathway. And it sounds really great to have everyone kind of on that early Algebra I one trajectory. But districts face significant resource constraints and staffing. So I think our real goal here was to provide a framework where districts could come in with their local priorities and resources mapped and see what’s realistic for them.”

With many colleges dropping standardized testing for applicants, transcripts featuring calculus — preferably Advanced Placement — have come to . However, of American high school students have no access to calculus whatsoever. As a result, of science, technology, engineering and math majors who arrive at college needing to take precalculus manage to earn a STEM bachelor’s degree, while those who didn’t progress past algebra 2 in high school have a less than 40% chance of earning any four-year degree whatsoever.

This problem begins in middle school. As I learned with my daughter, students who are not offered algebra 1 until ninth grade are de facto removed from the advanced math track. They will take geometry in 10th grade, algebra 2 in 11th and pre-calculus — not calc — in 12th. 

That may not be an insurmountable impediment for non-STEM majors, though it still affects which colleges all applicants ultimately get accepted to. But how many 14-year-olds are absolutely certain of their future career goals? My daughter had no interest in STEM until the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, when she participated in a introducing female and minority students to engineering. She’s now applying to college as an electrical engineering major, something that would be more difficult if she’d stayed on the curriculum path that terminated before calculus.

My husband insisted on keeping all doors open for our daughter, which is something all students deserve. In order to make that happen, however, all students would need to be able to take algebra 1 before high school. 

, only about 20% of middle schools offer algebra 1 to all their students, while 60% report some availability. And those opportunities are . A 2023-24 survey by the Rand Corp. determined that “nearly half of the wealthiest schools offered algebra to all of their eighth grade students, regardless of math ability, compared with about a third of the poorest schools.”

My daughter, as I’ve written before, is not a natural mathematician. She was fortunate that her middle school offered eighth grade algebra to all students. If she’d attended a program that didn’t have the course available, or one that dictated who could sign up based on prior mathematical knowledge, her future options might have narrowed as early as elementary school, when she wasn’t performing at the top of the class. If she’d gone to a high-poverty school instead of a wealthy one, she likely would have had no chance to give eighth grade algebra a try.

only about 24% of American eighth graders were enrolled in algebra 1, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they all .

What this all shows is that at least 75% of American public school kids are going to have a harder time getting into — and succeeding — at a college STEM program than if they’d enrolled having completed calculus. This is especially true for low-income and minority students, who would benefit most from a rigorous college education and a high-paying career.

That’s unconscionable. That’s unacceptable.

School is supposed to be about expanding opportunities, not limiting them. 

Like learning to read by third grade, taking eighth grade math is a pivotal moment in a child’s education. Students who pass Algebra 1 in eighth grade are more likely to sign up for more advanced math courses, and those who pass more advanced math courses are more likely to graduate from college and earn more money. “Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to a lot of further opportunities,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist who studies education at the American Institutes for Research, in a recent webinar.

Researchers are trying to understand why so few Black and Hispanic students and low-income students of all races are making it through this early gate. While 25 percent of white students passed algebra in eighth  grade in 2021, only 13 percent of Black students did, according to the most recent .

A collection of surveys of teachers and principals, conducted by the research organization RAND, suggests three problems at the poorest middle schools, which are disproportionately populated with Black and Hispanic students. Many don’t offer algebra at all. Their teachers have less training and math expertise, and they describe how they spend classroom time differently than teachers do at wealthier schools. That means the most advanced students at many middle schools in poor communities don’t have the opportunity to learn algebra, and many students at high-poverty schools aren’t receiving the kind of math lessons that could help them get ready for the subject. 

In 2023 and 2024, RAND surveyed more than 3,000 school principals and almost 1,000 math teachers across the country. The educators are part of a specially constructed national sample, designed to reflect all public schools and the demographics of the U.S. student population. A  analyzing some of the survey findings was released in October 2024. (That analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

The poorest 25 percent of schools had vastly different course offerings and teachers than the wealthiest 25 percent. Most strikingly, nearly a quarter of the highest poverty schools didn’t offer algebra at all to any eighth graders, compared with only 6 percent of the wealthiest schools. 

Conversely, poor schools are much less likely to adopt an algebra-for-all policy in eighth grade. Nearly half of the wealthiest schools offered algebra to all of their eighth grade students, regardless of math ability, compared with about a third of the poorest schools. 

Math teachers at high-poverty schools tended to have weaker professional preparation. They were far more likely to have entered the profession without first earning a traditional education degree at a college or university, instead completing an alternative certification program on the job, often without student teaching under supervision. And they were less likely to have a graduate degree or hold a mathematics credential. 

In surveys, a third of math teachers at high-poverty schools reported that they spent more than half of class time teaching topics that were below grade level, as well as managing student behavior and disciplining students. Lecture-style instruction, as opposed to classroom discussion, was far more common at the poorest schools compared to the wealthiest schools. RAND researchers also detected similar discrepancies in instructional patterns when they examined schools along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Hispanic students receiving “less optimal” instruction than white students. But these discrepancies were stronger by income than by race, suggesting that poverty may be a bigger factor than bias.

Many communities have tried putting more eighth graders into algebra classes, but that has sometimes left unprepared students worse off.  “Simply giving them an eighth grade algebra course is not a magic bullet,” said AIR’s Goldhaber, who commented on the RAND analysis during a Nov. 5 . Either the material is too challenging and the students fail or the course was “algebra” in name only and didn’t really cover the content. And without a college preparatory track of advanced math classes to take after algebra, the benefits of taking Algebra 1 in eighth grade are unlikely to accrue.

It’s also not economically practical for many low-income middle schools to offer an Algebra 1 course when only a handful of students are advanced enough to take it. A teacher would have to be hired even for a few students and those resources might be more effectively spent on something else that would benefit more students. That puts the most advanced students at low-income schools at a particular disadvantage. “It’s a difficult issue for schools to tackle on their own,” said Goldhaber. 

Improving math teacher quality at the poorest schools is a critical first step. Some researchers have suggested paying strong math teachers more to work at high-poverty schools, but that would also require the renegotiation of union contracts in many cities. And, even with financial incentives, there is a shortage of math teachers. 

For students, AIR’s Goldhaber argues the time to intervene in math is in elementary school to make sure more low-income students have strong basic math skills. “Do it before middle school,” said Goldhaber. “For many students, middle school is too late.”

El Paso Independent School District middle schoolers will be automatically enrolled in an advanced math class this school year, with the plan of getting nearly all eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1 by the 2025-26 school year.

This comes as school districts throughout the state ramp up advanced math class enrollment for middle schoolers to comply with a new law intended to get more eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1 — a course most Texas students have taken in ninth grade.

Senate Bill 2124, passed during the 2023 legislative session, requires schools to enroll students who performed in the top 40% in their fifth-grade math assessment into advanced math in sixth grade starting the 2024-25 school year, to prepare them for the high school level course.

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The law also requires schools to track performance and enrollment for students in advanced math classes, and allows parents to opt their children out of taking them.

EPISD plans to go beyond the state’s requirements, hoping to give more students the opportunity to take calculus in high school — a class that is usually required to get a college degree in math or science.

“If students don’t take algebra in the eighth grade, it’s very difficult to get to calculus by their senior year. The benefit of having everybody exposed to algebra in eighth grade is that it opens that door to more advanced math classes,” Jason Long, ���ʱ�����’s executive director of advanced academics,  told El Paso Matters.

Still, some worry ���ʱ�����’s goal may take more than one school year to accomplish successfully.

“They’re not going to be ready for it. It’s going to be setting kids up for failure,” El Paso American Federation of Teachers President Ross Moore told El Paso Matters.

Moore said he was not aware of ���ʱ�����’s plan before being approached by El Paso Matters.

Roughly 30% of eighth graders in the district took Algebra 1 during the 2023-24 school year, Long said.

Meanwhile, some El Paso school districts have already reached or surpassed the state’s goal.

About 40% of sixth graders attending the Ysleta Independent School District took advanced math during the 2023-24 school year, and that’s expected to reach 50% this coming school year, YISD Chief Academic Officer Brenda Chacon said.

Roughly 28% of eighth graders in YISD were enrolled in Algebra 1 in 2023-24, according to Texas Education Agency data compiled by the El Paso nonprofit Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development — or CREEED.

The Socorro Independent School District had 96% of its eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1, the data shows.

The district aims to have all its students take the class in middle school with exceptions for those who transferred from another district or were opted out by their parents.

For the past two school years, SISD had the top five schools with the highest in El Paso County.

These include Hernando, Montwood, Ensor, Antwine and Puentes middle schools for the 2023-24 school year.

SISD’s assistant superintendent of schools, Enrique Herrera, credited the district’s decade-long initiative to get more students into advanced math for this accomplishment.

“A lot of the success has happened because of how we’ve coordinated our curriculum,” Herrera told El Paso Matters. “For the most part, we try to prep sixth graders with honors math, unless parents want to opt out of it, but they start getting that rigor in sixth grade. They’re really doubling up in seventh and eighth grade, which then prepares them for the algebra that they’ll experience as eighth graders.”

Meanwhile, EPISD and the Clint Independent School District had the bottom five performing campuses: Bobby Joe Hill and Tinajero pre-K to eighth-grade schools, and Estrada, Guillen and Horizon middle schools.

How EPISD plans to implement Algebra 1 for eighth graders

EPISD already offered Algebra 1 and advanced math in middle school, which it calls honors courses, to certain students.

“All the pre-K through eighth-grade schools had it, but it was either at a parent’s request or a teacher’s recommendation,” Long said.

Now EPISD plans to reach the state’s 40% goal and will enroll all eighth graders at seven of its schools into Algebra 1 starting in August, as part of a pilot program.

This includes Brown, Canyon Hills, Charles, Guillen and Wiggs middle schools, and the Bobby Joe Hill and Tinajero pre-K to eighth-grade schools.

“These pilot campuses already started working with their seventh-grade students to prep them for the eighth-grade algebra,” Long said.

Long said the district plans to have all its eighth graders take algebra by the 2025-26 school year, with exceptions for students who transferred from another school district and were not enrolled in advanced math the previous year.

To ensure all students are prepared for these classes, Long said students who struggle with algebra may have to take two math courses in what’s called a double block – two periods that provide more instructional time.

SISD implemented a similar schedule that required students to take an intervention class along with their regular math course.

EPISD students also will be able to get help during an intervention and enrichment period known as What I Need, or WIN.

Long said the period works “almost like an elective” that allows students who are struggling with their classes to get extra support.

���ʱ�����’s when it was first started in the 2023-24 school year after the district in order to implement it eliminated a policy requiring elementary school students to take physical education daily.

The debate over eighth-grade algebra

As lawmakers and educators around the country look into ways to close achievement gaps in education, a debate has brewed about when students should take algebra and who has access to advanced math classes.

Some states have drastically different approaches.

In Texas, lawmakers, education advocates and business leaders have pushed for more students to take part in advanced classes to prepare more students to pursue college and enter STEM careers.

“Eighth-grade algebra is the gateway to taking advanced math in high school. Taking college-level math courses in high school is predictive of higher rates of postsecondary success,” said Gabe Grantham, policy advisor for Texas 2036.

The organization is a nonpartisan Dallas-based think tank that uses research to inform public policy changes.

Students who take college-level math courses in high school are six times more likely to complete college compared to their peers. Completing Algebra 1 in eighth grade has also been linked to higher wages.

In California, lawmakers decided students would need to wait until high school to take Algebra 1 in hopes of addressing inequities in education.

“We know that students of color, primarily black and brown students, and students from low-income backgrounds have lower test scores because the opportunities that they have available to them are not as good as their peers. And so because their test scores are lower they’re going to be less likely to be given the opportunity to take algebra in eighth grade, or if they are pushed into algebra early, they might not be as prepared for it as some of their peers,” Andrew McEachin, senior research director for the Educational Testing Service Research Institute, told El Paso Matters.

ETS develops and administers educational assessments, including the California High School Exit Exam.

McEachin agreed that eighth-grade algebra can serve as a gateway course to get students into college, but noted schools need to start early to ensure students are prepared for it.

“The framing should be around a successful opportunity for students, not so much that they just added or took it. What that means is that they’ve been set up for success for that course in eighth grade, and that likely is going to start from kindergarten or the first time they entered the district,” McEachin said when asked about ���ʱ�����’s goal.

conducted by the E3 Alliance found that the bottom 60% of performers in fifth-grade math were less successful in completing Algebra I in eighth grade.

E3 Alliance is a Central Texas based collaborative non-profit that aims to transform education through data driven initiatives.

Students who do not demonstrate proficiency in assessments should not be placed in advanced math until they receive the proper support, said Jennifer Cavazos Saenz, E3 Alliance senior director of communications and policy.

“Texas school districts that have implemented this approach have seen dramatic drops in student performance and outcomes,” Cavazos Saenz said.

Moore agreed it may take more preparation.

“It’s not ready unless they have good solid backing, they do it in an incremental basis, there is a training plan, personnel aspects have been brought out, and teachers aren’t being told on the first day back, ‘You’re not teaching eighth-grade math anymore, you’re teaching algebra,’” Moore said.

EPISD leaders said they have implemented a comprehensive approach “which includes tutoring for students and additional support for teachers to ensure success for all.”

“The district is fully staffed with highly qualified and certified teachers who are eager to kickstart this new opportunity. EPISD stands firm in its commitment to supporting teachers and students guaranteeing the success of this Algebra for All offering,” EPISD spokesperson Ernie Chacon said in a statement.

Correction: Because of incorrect information provided by the Ysleta Independent School District, an earlier version incorrectly stated the percentage of eighth-grade students enrolled in Algebra 1 in 2023-24.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

, who helped register Black residents to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, believed civil rights went beyond the ballot box. To Moses, who was a teacher as well as an activist, math literacy is a civil right: a requirement to earning a living wage in modern society. In 1982, he founded the to ensure that “students at the bottom get the math literacy they need.”

Michael and Diane discuss why America’s approach to math class isn’t adding up. They analyze the outcomes produced under the status quo, consider the current system’s alignment with workforce needs, and propose a personalized approach to teaching each student the math that is meaningful for their path. 

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane, how are you?

Diane Tavenner: Well, I’m well, and I’m going to start with urgent priorities today. Do you have any recipes that use a lot of lemons?

Michael Horn: Lemons, OK.

Diane Tavenner: And it’s not because we’re going to make lemonade out of lemons today. It’s literally after years of drought, with all the rain we’ve had, my lemon tree has gone insane, and I have now made curd and cakes and ice cream and ice cubes of juice. And I have run out of recipes and I still have hundreds of lemons.

Michael Horn: Well, it sounds like you’re in California. It sounds like you’ve had rain. It sounds like I remember why I miss California. And I will tell you, the only other two I will add to your list is preserved lemons for salads. And then, of course, there’s an alcohol that you could make as well. But we won’t go there today. Instead, we could think about all the ratios and all that stuff that goes into making it just right, because I know you’ve been wanting to talk about math and some of the things that you’ve been learning about how our school system thinks or perhaps doesn’t think about math in relation to work. So I’d love you to start to unpack that.

Status quo K-12 math pathways 

Diane Tavenner: Well, great, because it’s much better that I talk about this with you than turn to the drink because math can make me feel like I want to do that sometimes. So I appreciate your willingness to have this conversation. And what is prompting it for me is, you know, I have thought about math for many years from sort of a K-12 educator perspective, but now I’m coming at it from this new direction where we’re really thinking about careers and post secondary and what’s getting me going on this topic is my observation of how important math is in careers and how that is really at odds with how people in K-12, I think, think about it. And so let me just lay something out and see if it makes sense to you, which is my experience in K -12 is there’s a mindset there and it’s a mindset among students and parents and teachers and counselors and kind of everyone who is in the system. We really focus on math almost exclusively in how it relates to college and specifically, like, how do I do what I need to do in math because it’s a key to college admissions, essentially? And so the big thinking that ends up happening, especially in high schools, is if I can get all the way to calculus, it gives me a better chance of getting accepted to college. And an elite college at that, maybe into the major that I want. Taking the most challenging…if I can’t get to college, taking the most challenging courses that I can in high school relative to what’s offered, helps me get into college. Getting good enough grades in math helps in my GPA to get into college. Previously and maybe a little bit again now emerging, taking the SAT and the ACT and getting the best score I can helps me get into college. The point being, as you hear, it’s all about getting into college. And as I think about my time in K-12, we almost were never talking about the value of the learning of the math. It was always this entry into college.

Michael Horn: Yeah, it certainly matches up with my experience as well. Diane, and I know it’s playing out there in California. Let’s go there in a moment. But I’ll just add, Jeff Selingo has made the point to me recently that all of what you just said is absolutely true. And it’s a little bizarre that colleges care this much about math because most students, when they get to college, are going to take at most one math class. Now, if you’re going to MIT or Caltech, maybe that’s different. But for most of us, we get to college, you do your math requirement if you have one, maybe you had gen ed math, so you have to pass a test or something like that, and then most students are sort of done with it, Diane, so it’s sort of bizarre how much the college and K-12 system cares about it as an entry point into admission as opposed to anything you’re going to do with that track. But let’s unpack what’s going on in California.

California’s new math framework 

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, this is the other piece that just has me deeply into math right now, which is I feel like California is always having a math war, but there is a renewed math war at the, you know, peaking right now. Over the last multiple years, about four years, California has been trying to, as a state, adopt a new math framework. And this framework has been very controversial. And know was first presented and everyone’s outraged. And so they went back and they edited and revised. That’s been going on for four years. Well, it just got approved at the state level. Still people are very upset about it. But I’ve been reading the coverage about it and the arguments around it, and maybe I’ll just give you a couple of quotes here that I think go directly to what we’re talking about. This is from the LA Times, and the quote is “Another concern of people who don’t like this math framework is that many top colleges still place an emphasis on whether applicants get to calculus and how well they do in that course.” And so this is just a well-known, well-communicated expectation from colleges and universities. And what I would also say is from the most selective and elite, because you and I both know there’s a small number of those. There’s a huge number of colleges that are non selective – you don’t need to take calculus to get into those colleges. So it’s like this small number really driving the agenda for most people. That’s on the one side, you’ve got these people angry that because we’re driving every kid to college, we’re not actually focused on equity and going at a slower pace, more kids able to kind of learn together and things like that. And then the flip side of that is parents who are really frustrated and worried that their kids opportunities will be limited and held back. And this actually happened in California and in San Francisco, where they decided they were not going to teach algebra in 8th grade because it wasn’t fair and equitable. And so we’re literally saying we’re withholding learning from some kids in the name of…And on both sides, I’m like, oh, my gosh, Michael, this is not third way thinking.

Michael Horn: No, not at all. I mean, it goes to the heart of, I think what frustrates both of us around these conversations is that clearly the answer to equity is not the opposite of excellence. And clearly, having a system that drives off the expectation of calculus for all doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. And I know you’ve been investigating about how does math even manifest itself into these careers. So I’d love you to tell what you’ve been finding in that, because that may be the most interesting piece of the puzzle.

The role of math in the modern workforce

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And I think that my headline here is, and we’re using datasets that lots of people use, so sort of the federal government data sets around labor and statistics and jobs and careers and things like that. And so as we just dig into this and really think about the usefulness of it, my headline is…Well, let me just share with you what we’re discovering. So there are approximately 923 careers in the US. And I say approximately because we do, in these data sets, believe there aren’t careers that are represented in there. There are some, I will also tell you, that I had no idea were careers. So it’s fascinating. It’s a little bit of a game. Like, I challenge anyone to write down the number of careers you can think of 923 is quite a lot.

Michael Horn: There’s no way I would get there.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, 235 of those 923 literally have math as an important skill for doing that job. And these are jobs where you’re going to be doing math kind of on a daily basis, doing calculations, using math in your actual work. And so just some examples of these types of careers. You’re an actuary, you’re a statistician, those probably seem pretty obvious. You’re a sales manager, you’re a personal finance advisor. And so I feel like those seem like, oh, but there are 235 careers that are using math kind of regularly. There’s 573 careers, inclusive of those 235, that also have math as like, important knowledge you need for doing your job. And so you might not be doing calculations and stats every day, but when you’re a pharmacist and an economist, and a wind energy engineer, and a stonemason, and a logistics engineer, and an insurance underwriter and a farmer, you need a grasp of and knowledge of math in order to effectively do your work and to be engaged in your career. The other thing I would just say about this is all these careers, these 573 careers, when I look at them and stack rank them and money isn’t everything, but making a family sustaining wage is really important and a thing we aim for. These careers are highly represented in the group that makes, on average, $75,000 or more a year. So in the sort of top end, so not only math an important part of the majority of careers that are in the country in some way, shape or form, but definitely overrepresented in those where you’re going to make more money. And here’s maybe the punchline. Very few of these careers require any use of calculus, or quite frankly, advanced algebra even. And so most of them require just a strong grasp of real world applications of math, like statistics and fluency and basic math concepts, and confidence that you actually understand these things and practical application of them. And so I just would say this is so contrary to my experience in K-12, where almost no one is focused on math for career opportunities and success. I don’t think I ever had that conversation in K-12.

Michael Horn: No, that makes sense. It’s interesting. It brings to mind when I wrote from Reopen to Reinvent, I joined the argument that many more people should be learning data science and statistics, rather than the algebra II into calculus path. And one of the arguments was Anthony Carnivale, who was then the director of the Center on Education and Workforce at Georgetown, had this stat in an article where just 11% of US jobs involved work that required understanding algebra II concepts, and only 6% regularly used those concepts. So a bare minority. But then you’re pointing out that doesn’t mean the careers don’t have math at their heart. It’s just not math on this calculus track, if you will, that is a relic, we should add. It’s a relic of the sort of distinguishing between vocational education and the college track education, which in our mind is a boundary that should stop existing also. That’s an outgrowth of all this. So where do we go, I guess, from here? If that’s the reality, where do we go?

Results of the status quo

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, and I definitely want to get into some solutions. We never, of course, want to leave here without generating some path forward. But it might be worth staying for one more minute on what is underlying this problem because it’s not just like K-12 people running around and purposely sabotaging math. I don’t think that that’s the objective, but I do think that our current design of our K-12 system, kind of, as we know, results in very few, let’s call them mathematically literate, let alone fluent students. And I was thinking about this because we talk about reading and we talk about literacy quite a bit. And as we both know, there’s a renewed focus on the science of teaching reading and literacy. And I do think as a whole society feels very convicted that everyone should be able to read and everyone should be literate. I’m not sure that that’s how we think about math literacy, quite frankly. And so I think one of the things that you’re just pointing to that’s embedded in the system, the K-12 system we have, is if you have calculation as this destination, and you just said it, there’s one pathway, then there’s like this sequence of courses that you take, and really it’s like every single person’s on that same pathway, and it’s just how far you’re going to get on it in what period of time. Will you make it to algebra? Will you make it to geometry? Will you make it to algebra II? To trigonometry? It’s almost like this game of like, well, where is everyone going to fall out, if you will. And this is all driven by this drive to four-year college for all, which is the thing we’ve been talking about a lot. And so I just think it’s worth us noting that only about 8% of high school students actually take calculus. So that is the dropout rate, if you will, of math along this pathway. So I think one thing in the design we need to think about is this pathway concept. I think the second challenge is K-12 is not really connected to employers and to employment. Again, college for all, that’s our focus. That’s what we thought we needed to be doing. And when you’re disconnected from the actual use and what people are doing, I think it’s challenging. And then, Michael, there are very few teachers capable of teaching math. I think this is something we’re really going to have to grapple with when I’m going through these 923 careers. You need to know a lot of math in order to teach math. And as we just showed, there’s a lot of other careers where if you know math, you’re going to be very competitive in those careers. They’re very lucrative careers. They don’t often require as much post-high school education and credentialing. And so why would you choose to be a math teacher? And I will just say math teachers for a long time have been among the very hardest to hire. There are tons of math positions that go literally unfilled every year. And I just see this problem growing and not shrinking. And so I just think those are some of the elements of the system that we need to think about solutions for if we’re going to do something different here.

Defining math literacy in the age of AI

Michael Horn: No, that all makes sense. I’m just curious, and you may not have a take on this if I’m putting you on the spot, but how would you think about defining what is math literacy, as opposed to the completion of algebra two, trigonometry, precalc, calc, if that’s the old sequence. How would you define that? Or how would you think about creating a definition? Maybe that’s the fairer question. And then the second part of it is, I’m just sort of curious if you have a thought of does AI change any of that? We know a lot of these large language models don’t do math particularly well today, but we also assume that that will change over time. So I’m just sort of curious how that enters into your thinking or no?

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, this is such a good question. Well, the first one I love, because you sort of are inviting me to think about a rubric and learning objectives, which, as you know, in my nerdy world is…

Michael Horn: You geek out there.

Diane Tavenner: So it’s really fun. So the first logical place I think people go is, well, rather than this traditional sequence that most of us are familiar with, sort of this pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, algebra II, et cetera, you go with an integrated mass sequence. And California this is one thing that the state has tried to do in this framework, is promote a more integrated approach, which conceptually I think is maybe in the right direction, in that it does seem to be a little bit more grounded in real world applications. Like, very rarely are you getting these pure sort of subjects when you’re using math in the real world. I think it breaks down in a couple of ways. One, I don’t know that it is truly connected to real world application. And two, I think in the teaching of it, it’s not how math teachers are trained, unless your entire system is doing this when kids are having to move, shift back and forth like it’s just a mess. And it’s not recognized by college, which is driving things. So I’m not sure integrated math gets us where we need to be. So how would I think about what it would mean to be math literate and math fluent? One way we could start would just be to go look at what is the math that is being done in these careers and quite frankly, in real life. I mean, I don’t know about you, but being a human, you have to manage your budget and your finances. What are the real world uses of math, concepts of math …

Michael Horn: … And then pull back and define around that.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Michael Horn: Interesting. OK.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Michael Horn: And I guess it’d be super interesting if AI starts to, in fact, change some of these professions. As you know, I’m seeing white papers come across my computer screen saying we don’t need to worry about computation anymore. And I suspect there’s a point where that’s true, and there’s a point where maybe it’s not true that actually still learning these fundamental processes in the same way we do work about on phonemes and things like that are still building blocks to understanding how math is in fact functioning, even if the manipulation of equations or things like that become less important.

Diane Tavenner: I had a really interesting conversation the other night with Irhum, who was on our second episode of this season related to AI about this very topic. And there’s a big generational gap between us. And so he’s always a little surprised about what I did in the old days. So he was saying to me, he’s like, I am one of the few people where I literally use calculus in my job. So he is truly using calculus. So he’s very mathematically literate and fluent, obviously at high levels. But he was advocating to me that what most people should be focusing on is statistics and data, significantly more to your exact point, and what you’ve been writing about, and certainly what I agree with and he was so surprised to hear my experience of doing research methods in college and statistics in college, and he’s like, wait a minute, you used a calculator, and he’s like, why would you do that?

Michael Horn: Why wouldn’t you just type into Excel?

Diane Tavenner: Literally. The actual computational piece is just far less important to him. It’s the conceptual understanding and the application and usage, because in his mind, we have all of these tools that do that. He’s like, technology does that so much better than humans. The likelihood that a human is going to make a mistake is very, very high. It’s inefficient for us to be doing that type of mathematical work. And in some ways, it’s what becomes the turn off to a lot of people, I would argue.

Michael Horn: Sure, 100%. I mean, when it becomes so about essentially formula manipulation, as opposed to understanding the conceptual underlying what you’re, in fact doing right, it turns a lot of folks off. So that all makes sense. If we’ve identified the problem, we started to define how we would think about literacy and fluency in this world. We can admit we haven’t nailed that yet, but sort of putting some questions out there and suggesting maybe some of this might evolve. Can we go to solutions now? 

Innovative solutions to our math challenges 

Diane Tavenner: I guess my first suggestion would know, I don’t know many people in America who are super excited about the presidential campaign this year. So maybe we take that one out and we sub in a different campaign. And here would be my vote for the campaign of America is that we just need to rethink the importance of being math literate in America and why it matters to each of us. Personally, I used to work with this incredible math teacher, Megan Taylor, and she always tried to drive the point home. She’s like, no one would go to a party and casually say, like, “Yeah, I’m illiterate. I can’t read,” and be fine with that. And yet, all the time, people, I’m terrible at math. I can’t do math. And so this notion that we have gotten comfortable as a nation, that most people are terrible and can’t do math, we need a campaign in the other direction of the importance of math and the importance of us collectively being literate at it. A changing expectation. I would want you and I, as starters, to be as passionate about young people coming out math literate as we are them coming out reading, writing literate. 

Michael Horn: Love it. If in future episodes, we cover what presidential candidates should be saying about elections, we’ll have to strike this from the record. But I agree, this would be a much more inspiring use of the next year of our national dialogue I suspect.

Diane Tavenner: Indeed, that second one we’ve already touched on a little bit and we started to brainstorm there. But we need the math that’s being taught. We just need to shift the focus, I think, in K-12 away from how is this a screener for a small number of kids into elite colleges? And how’s that driving the whole system into what is the math that is meaningful and useful and used in the real world and really organizing our instruction around that? And again, we’ve talked about integrated math should be able to do this. Maybe it’s the starting place, but it’s falling short right now. It needs some work.

Michael Horn: Yeah. And on this one, and this may bleed into where I think you’ll probably go next. But one of the thoughts that I’ve had is for those individuals like Irhum who like calculus, is going to be central to what they do, I want that pathway available, but I don’t want it to be the expectation that that’s the only option. And I don’t want it to be seen as better or worse than, I just want it to be a choice that I’ve made because it speaks to me, because it aligns with things that I have learned about my passions and purpose and things of that nature. And it’s a considered choice as opposed to something either done to me or an option that I don’t even have. 

Diane Tavenner:Completely, and I feel like we’re going back to our roots of what we actually originally met over, which is personalization. And I think that this is probably going to be the most controversial. And I want to be really clear about what I’m saying and not saying here and the whole totality of it, but we need to totally rethink how we’re teaching math from a needs outcome, but a practical perspective as well. We have technology, and AI is only going to help this. We have personalized math instruction options that are pretty darn good right now in the world that really, I would argue, can do a better job of personalizing instruction and creating a personal pathway for every single student to learn math from very young all the way through high school than what almost every math classroom in America can do. And then you add in the fact that you have to have this math classroom be as good as the next year and the next year and the next year, which is just unrealistic at this point. We need to personalize math instruction. We need to use technology to do it and that means it needs to look completely different than the way it does in school. And there are many implications to that, and we can take a minute to unpack those. But I’m guessing that you’re aligned with me here on this.

Michael Horn: 100%. And I think it’s interesting for people who hear this, they’ll say, well, tracking does that. And in my mind it doesn’t. Because while the opposite of tracking, putting everyone in the same thing at the same pace is not an answer, and I would totally argue against that. Tracking is a very blunt instrument on this. As we know, math is cumulative, right? So there’s a certain number of power skills that translate, that are critical for learning what comes next and that branch you in different directions and so forth. And you just think about that individual and I’ll just tell you a story. This happened a few years ago in Lexington, where I live, where I was talking with the father over coffee, and he was just anguishing because his then 8th grade daughter was trying to decide would she take honors geometry or regular track geometry, something like that, in the 9th grade. And I was just thinking what a terrible choice for a young person. She should just be taking math and she could move as fast or as slow as she needed to do along the skills. And then if because of the way our education system works, we needed to give it a name, afterwards we could, at the end of the year, look at what she had mastered and give it a name. But why were we forcing her to make this artificial choice that was either going to hold her back or create stress she couldn’t handle and all these other things when the objective should just be learning the math. And to your point, we can do this in a personalized way. And then for people who I think may be hearing us and saying, well, that sounds really individualistic, well, great, because then I get to work in projects where I apply the math. I’ve worked in a group with people, but I’m not like being held back on the conceptual understanding because my neighbor is ahead or behind me at any given point in time. 

Diane Tavenner: We’re totally aligned, Michael, and I would just add even a little bit more like, let’s describe what this could literally look like in a school so people could imagine it. Imagine a young person going to school starting from kindergarten all the way through college, and they are literally in a math software technology program, probably more than one over the time. Maybe it’s a small cluster of them, but they are in that program continuously for their entire K-12 education. It’s adaptive. It’s growing with them. There is no limit on the amount of math they can learn.

Michael Horn: There’s no five-week review at the beginning of fall to see where you may have or may not have remembered.

Diane Tavenner: You’re just making progress. You’re never sort of waiting on a class or like behind on a class. They’re doing that. Imagine whatever, an hour or two or three a day, whatever it needs, they’re doing that work in the school building. What can the adults be doing so they’re not isolated? A couple of things. One, there’s a whole sort of coaching and mentoring component to supporting young people to stay in there and hang in there and reflect on what they’re doing and making sure that they’re growing and monitoring their progress and diagnosing what’s happening, if they’re falling off and celebrating when they’re advancing. So there’s that role and component, which is important, but it doesn’t have to be done by a math teacher and a math expert. And the second piece is, and you said it, if schools are teaching the way they should be, which is they have projects that kids are engaged in where they are really heterogeneously grouped and they are real world, and they’re applying these concepts, you can have exactly what the California math framework is envisioning and what San Francisco wanted, which is all these kids working together using math concepts, regardless of where they are in their development and applying the math, being in a social setting, all of those things.

The obstacles to change 

Diane Tavenner: So that’s the type of thing we’re talking about. But what that requires is changes in policy, changes in the role of the teacher, changes in course offerings, changes in how the transcript reflects what kids are learning, which feels a little daunting.

Michael Horn: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of work on this, as you know, and I know that the traditional system, it’s like, I mean, Clay would always say this when he would describe this Michigan manufacturing corporation case study, and he’s like, there were metaphorical grooves in the floor that meant that the welding station only visited whatever station and would never go across the factory floor to see someone else over there. It was like they were just so well worn. And that’s sort of where our system keeps getting stuck as well, I think. And you make sort of a change to any one of these, right? We’re both pretty excited, I think, about the team teaching work that Arizona State is starting to roll across, the next education workforce stuff, but that’s going to bump into something else. Or as we’ve talked about in this podcast, before you change seat time requirements, the Carnegie work that we’ve had Tim on talking about, Tim Knowles talking about, yeah, but then finance, then how you do scheduling, how you’ve credentialed, like all these things ripple in very complicated ways, that it’s never just one simple answer.

Diane Tavenner: No, well, this is your expertise now, but as we know, the big existing incumbent system doesn’t really disrupt itself because something is always getting in the way. And so I do think we have to wonder, are there other ways to getting to this outcome because it’s so important. And I do think this is where the rise of ESAs or educational savings account gets interesting. And especially if you combine that with what I think is an emerging opportunity for alternative methods to validate skills and knowledge. And we had some of that conversation with Tim when he was here in Carnegie and what they’re doing with. But like, especially in the world of math where we have plenty of valid assessments that are valid and no one’s…

Michael Horn: Going to question.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And so what happens if the campaign works and families are like, oh, I want a good career and job and I need to know math and the school is not giving me a pathway to understand and learn the math I need. So I’m going to unbundle and I’m going to use some resources to go get that somewhere else.

Michael Horn: Yeah. So before we wrap up here and move on to what we’re reading, this just throws me back to season one where we had this conversation of the haves and the have nots in the schools and in a place like Palo Alto where all the kids had already taken the math class before they showed up for math, you know in summer school or in their Russian school of math after school or whatever it was. And my reflection is, well, okay, I mean, that’s not how I would choose to spend my kids time or my money, but let’s say they did it. Could you just say, like, yeah, you’ve passed an assessment that shows you have mastered these math concepts. Great. Why waste your time doing the exact same thing now? Unless you didn’t really master it, in which case it’s more about cementing it and we should be able to. These assessments can measure that as well. And I think you’re right, the ESAs…It’s funny how we both have come sort of around to this view that I think it creates a really important set of alternatives that aren’t just schools to rethinking a lot of these structures. And you mentioned transcripts and grading and things like that that get very complicated. But when you get out of that world and you find other ways to validate and other ways to offer, it changes a lot of the questions that you ask in some pretty fresh, exciting ways that I think become more intuitive when they’re not asked from the perspective of a parent or student in the system itself.

Diane Tavenner: A lot there.

What we’re reading and watching  

Michael Horn: That was a lot. All right, so let’s get out of there. And besides thinking about math and researching all the math that will be used in careers, are you reading, listening to, watching anything outside of math? Because I don’t know if you know this, we actually have someone on social media now who has created a Google Doc, apparently with all the recommendations we’ve given over the five seasons. No pressure, but anything good?

Diane Tavenner: Oh, my God. Tracking to make sure I’m not repeating. Well, I think I may have mentioned this, Michael, but Rhett is in his last semester at Minerva. He’s in London. So I’m going to head to visit him soon, and we’re actually going to go up to Scotland. And I’m super interested in Scotland because there’s so many interesting things there. It was one of the most literate countries at one point in time. Small, poor, yet highly literate, an enlightenment. They’re really amazing thinkers. So I’ve just been immersing myself in Scottish history and reading, and I’ve sort of moved over to the fiction part of it now. So one of their most famous authors is Ian Rankin, and he has this famous detective, and all the novels take place in Scotland. And so I’m actually reading his kind of memoir, which is super fascinating right now.

Michael Horn: Wow.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. How about you?

Michael Horn: That’ll be an interesting trip. What about me? I was thinking about this beforehand. I have not finished a book in a while, but I’ve just been continuing to geek out on tennis, which I think I said last time on the two-minute tennis. And so I am now completely hooked on…Andy Roddick has a new podcast called Served. I’m completely hooked on that. And then there’s this new rules of tennis, sort of money ball tennis sort of thing called Fuzzy Yellow Balls. And I’ve been reading a video book, and as you know, I don’t…Irony since we’re video recording this, but I don’t love watching videos generally to learn, I prefer to read, but I finally, like, I subscribed to it several months ago and then was like, oh, it’s videos, and put it aside. And then I’ve been obsessively going through this new singles rulebook. It helped me in my match the other day, and it’s been awesome, but I feel like I’m unlearning literally everything I thought was true about how you play tennis over the last few months, so it’s been really cool.

Diane Tavenner: You’re a great model for what we should probably be doing in education.

Michael Horn: There you go, disrupting everything. And with that, we’ll conclude and just say thank you for joining us on Class Disrupted. We’ll see you next time.

The 83,916-to-16,105 March 5 tally, according to from the San Francisco Department of Elections, reflects public frustration with the district’s decision to delay the course for all students until the 9th grade. Not only did it deny advanced learners an opportunity to challenge themselves with rigorous coursework — and put them on track for high school calculus  — opponents said, but it also did little to boost Black and Hispanic student achievement in the subject. 

There are in San Francisco. Turnout was roughly 21% on this Super Tuesday, which also included the presidential primary and the primary to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Bay Area Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

The algebra ballot measure is not binding and the school board had already to return the course to the middle school. But the results did drive home a lesson to a board that has for failing to perform to residents’ satisfaction. 

“The voters have made it very clear they want our public schools to teach as many kids as much as possible,” said Patrick Wolff, who had children in the district from 2010 to 2022. “The people of San Francisco understand that true equity and justice in our public schools never requires compromising academic excellence.”

Wolff, cofounder of Families for San Francisco, which was later absorbed into TogetherSF, said he wants the board’s vote — and the public’s — to bring lasting change. 

“I hope that our elected officials and public school administrators have heard the people’s message,” he said. “The only way to keep public school reform on track is for the people to keep being informed, engaged and involved.”

SFUSD’s struggle with algebra reflects a nationwide battle over when to introduce the topic. Student participation varies across the country. While some school systems, including Dallas, have crafted policies that have greatly increased students’ chance to take the course in middle schools, others use highly selective enrollment processes, which often leads to the exclusion of Black, Hispanic and low-income children. 

Rex Ridgeway, who, along with several others, regarding algebra last year, expected strong voter response. 

“This was the first time that the public was able to speak out publicly about Algebra 1 after 10 years of damage to our kids,” he said. “I was not surprised by how passionate people are on Algebra 1.”

The answer can’t be that the district simply returns to an earlier, failed approach, said one expert whose organization promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success.

“So, the prior tracking policy didn’t lead to equitable outcomes,” Melodie Baker, national policy director at Just Equations, told The 74 before this week’s vote. “Detracking didn’t lead to equitable outcomes either. So it makes sense that they’re not sticking with it, but they’ll need to find new ways to implement eighth-grade algebra that ensure better outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Not just revert to what they were doing before.”

Meredith Dodson, executive director of SF Parents, said Wednesday that the public’s work to improve SFUSD is not over.

“In addition to finally bringing algebra back to middle school, our district also needs to figure out how to better prepare kids so more of them can access algebra in middle school and higher level math beyond that,” she said. “We know we still have a long road ahead to make sure that every student has the academic support they need coming from our district — and that starts early.”

Concerned about lowering standards in Florida’s public high schools, the state House on Thursday voted to stick with the original requirements: Teens must pass statewide Algebra 1 and 10th grade English Language Arts exams to be able to get their diplomas.

The Senate would have to vote on the legislation.

During the first week of this year’s legislative session, the Senate passed a package of bills aimed at “deregulating” Florida public schools through measures such as removing Algebra I and 10th grade ELA exams from the graduation requirements in Florida.

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That became controversial, with House Speaker Paul Renner vehemently opposed to easing the graduation requirements. Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy of Port St. Lucie, who sponsored the education deregulation bill in the House, took the same stance as Renner, meaning, leaving Algebra 1 and ELA 10 graduation requirements intact.

Maintaining standards

“I feel like lowering the standards can disproportionately affect students from disadvantaged backgrounds and all students as it may lessen the pressure on schools to provide high-quality education to all students regardless of their socio-economic status,” Trabulsy said on the House floor. “In Florida, high standards of education help ensure that students will be adequately prepared for their future, so lowering our standards here is just absolutely not an option, in my opinion.”

Although the bill received bipartisan support, Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman of Broward County said she hoped some of the provisions, such as removing the graduation requirements, get added back to the bill.

“The Senate removes the barrier to high school graduation from passing a standardized test in ELA and math. This is really important because a lot of kids have testing anxiety and are not good test takers,” Bartleman said. “I personally know one girl who struggled and struggled, ruined her whole senior year … seeing someone to deal with her anxiety, and it was just to pass up high stakes tests.”

Other opponents — such as the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd), the education think tank founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — say allowing students to graduate, even if they don’t pass the Algebra I and 10th grade ELA exams, would decrease the value of high school diplomas.

“Florida has long been a leader in maintaining high standards, strong accountability and robust choice in education. That’s why copying states like Oregon, New York and New Jersey in rolling back student expectations would have been the wrong way for Florida to go. We’re happy the House rejected these elements of the Senate’s proposal,” wrote Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd and executive director of the Foundation for Florida’s Future, in a statement.

On the other hand, people in favor of removing high-stakes tests say a single exam doesn’t reflect students’ knowledge.

“We should be focused on teacher and learning and not high-stakes testing. Testing had a role in helping inform teachers in their instructions, but using tests in a punitive way does not help student learning,” Florida Education Association president Andrew Spar wrote to the Florida Phoenix.

Book challenge fees

Originally, Trabulsy’s education deregulation bill included a $100 “processing fee” on subsequent challenges filed by anyone who’s already filed five unmerited challenges in a district where he or she doesn’t have a child enrolled. She wiped the fee or any other restriction on book bans from the bill because another bill () the House passed last week included the same fee. HB 1285 is still pending Senate approval.

Renner and told reporters on Wednesday that they supported efforts to reduce book challenges.

Additionally, parents of students in kindergarten through 2nd grade must have an opportunity to provide input about the decision to retain their kids at their current grade level if they are not proficient in ELA and math.

The deregulation bills have been largely watered down from when lawmakers started talking about the proposals in November. Previously, senators wanted to allow parents to decide whether their 3rd grade student would be held back if they couldn’t read and to allow schools to provide 100 minutes of recess over a week rather than the existing mandate of 20 minutes every day.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

In the last few years, the Socorro Independent School District has been preparing its middle school students to enroll in algebra once they get to the eighth grade — a class typically taken by high school freshmen — hoping to get more of them into college-level math in high school.

By 2022, nearly 100% of the district’s eighth-graders were taking algebra 1, a class most Texas students take in ninth grade. Now, five SISD schools are being recognized for having the highest middle school algebra 1 test scores in El Paso County for the 2022-23 school year.

On Monday, the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, is awarding nearly $60,000 in cash gift cards to faculty and staff at Col. John Ensor Middle School, Montwood Middle School, Rafael Hernando III Middle School and William D. Slider Middle School and the Ernesto Serna Fine Arts Academy. The non-profit funds programs in both traditional school districts and charter schools in hopes of improving student performance in El Paso.

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SISD school improvement officer Carmen Crosse said the plan to get more of the district’s middle school students into a high school math class started during the 2018-19 school year. At the time, SISD had about 40% of its eighth graders enrolled in algebra 1.

By the end 2018-19 school year, 93% of those students met grade level and 73% mastered the subject in their spring STAAR exam scores.

“In 2019, we saw that kids could do more, so why not provide that opportunity to more kids?” Crosse told El Paso Matters. “Teachers and administrators were open to the idea of moving as many kids as were ready to take algebra class, and we found that they did well.”

Crosse said SISD begins preparing its students for the class as soon as they enter middle school by introducing material students would normally learn later on.

“We started adding some seventh- and eighth-grade curriculum into the sixth and the seventh grade to ensure that they have seen and reviewed that higher level material,” Crosse said. “And our teachers in the algebra classes are also providing interventions if there are gaps.”

Cade Vera, 13, an eighth grader at Sun Ridge Middle School in the SISD, said that while Algebra may be a tough subject, he is learning the concepts and enjoys the work.

“It’s different, but if you pay attention and do the work, you won’t fail,” he said. “The teacher is taking a lot of time to move us along. The students struggling are those that don’t do the work.”

Crosse said the transition was delayed when students fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic, but by the 2022-23 school year almost all of SISD’s eighth graders were taking algebra 1. Crosse noted there were a few exceptions for students who had transferred from another school district.

That year, Ensor got the highest middle school algebra 1 STAAR test scores with 84% of its total students meeting grade level.

“I want to credit my algebra 1 team who stayed after school all the time, who dedicated their personal time to come in on Saturdays and who took off half of their intercession to come be with the kids,” said Ensor Middle School Principal Stephen Fernandez. “This is a very special group. It is not the norm to have teachers be this dedicated to their craft.”

Fernandez said the school also implemented a double block schedule that required students to take an intervention class along with their regular math course after administrators saw significant gaps in its seventh-grade test scores.

School administrators, CREEED leaders and education experts agree that having students take algebra 1 in middle school ultimately gives them more options to decide what they want to do in high school and beyond. In particular, it can allow them to take math classes for college credit while in high school.

“It opens up other opportunities for them in high school whether they want to get into early college or any other specialty. We’re really excited about getting them prepared, opening up their schedule and giving more opportunities for them to do other things,” Fernandez said.

One of those options may be enrolling in SISD’s early college program, where students can earn an associate’s degree or 60 credit hours towards a bachelor’s degree. During the 2022-23 school year, about 450 students graduated from SISD with college degrees ranging from nursing to business and finance.

Crosse said SISD hopes that number will rise to about 600 at the end of the 2023-24 school year, as more students who took algebra 1 in eighth grade after 2019 begin to graduate.

For now, CREEED hopes to encourage other school districts to follow SISD’s lead and get at least 90% of El Paso’s eighth graders enrolled in algebra 1 through its Algebra In Middle School (AIM High) initiative. The goal is to get students enrolled in dual credit classes once they get to high school and ultimately improve their chances of succeeding in college.

“We have put a lot of focus on trying to get a higher level of preparation for post-secondary education, and algebra is one of the gateway courses,” Eddie Rodriguez, CREEED’s executive director and board secretary, told El Paso Matters. “By opening the gateway earlier you actually get a greater opportunity for students to effectively reach to the next level.”

CREEED researchers also found that having more eighth graders in algebra 1 could improve their test scores. During the 2022-23 school year, all of the top-performing middle schools in algebra 1 had the majority of their students enrolled in the class.

As part of the initiative, members of CREEED will give every faculty and staff member at the top five performing middle schools in algebra 1 gift cards ranging from $50 to $500.

Rodriguez said the organization wanted to recognize the teachers and staff — ranging from secretaries to custodians — for their roles in helping students succeed.

“We recognize that something like this comes about because of the commitment of the entire school and all of its staff. So what we decided to do in this effort is to recognize the entire school.” Rodriguez said. “It takes that kind of engagement to bring these kinds of results.”

Disclosure: The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development is a financial supporter of El Paso Matters. Financial supporters play no role in El Paso Matters’ journalism. The news organization’s policy on editorial independence can be found .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

, which relies largely on recent findings from outside research groups and the federal government, warns that on just about every indicator that matters — basic skills, college going, mental health and more — the pandemic has set older students back.

“Time is running out for these kids,” said Robin Lake, director of , a research organization at Arizona State University. “Many have already exited the K-12 system, either by graduating or essentially disappearing on us. Too many kids still are missing — we don’t know if they’ve dropped out or where they’ve gone.”

Outside researchers who study these students said the fears are justified. In response, Lake and others are proposing a raft of reforms, including extending “gap years” to any high school graduates who need time to catch up — as well as a new commitment to reforming high school so it works for more students. 

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged the slow pace of academic turnaround, calling it “appalling and unacceptable.”

“It’s like as a country we’ve normalized those gaps,” he said in separate remarks to reporters Tuesday,

Cardona spoke just before the department unveiled new efforts to spur pandemic recovery, including $50 million in competitive grants for literacy and higher expectations on districts to track and reverse chronic absenteeism. The department also released new data showing that roughly 187,000 tutors and mentors have signed up through its National Partnership for Student Success — bringing it closer to its goal of recruiting 250,000 adults to help students get back on track by 2025.

‘Insidious and hidden’

As of this fall, researchers said, about 13.5 million students in four high school graduating classes have been affected by the pandemic.

CRPE first issued its “State of the American Student” report in September 2022, saying pandemic school closures in 2020 and 2021 led to “unprecedented academic setbacks” for American students that made pre-existing inequalities and the nation’s youth mental health crisis worse.

A year later, CRPE says, students are still struggling in many areas. They point to record-low math and reading scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth- and eighth-grade students — in both grades, one in three can’t read at even the “basic” achievement level.

And missed more than 10% of school days during the 2021-22 school year, twice as many as in previous years. More than reported “stunted behavioral and social-emotional development” in students because of the pandemic, researchers note.

But they say schools should pay extra attention to older students, many of whom lost critical instruction time during the pandemic. 

The pandemic, Lake said, “is continuing to derail learning throughout K-12. But what we came away with was that the derailment is looking a little bit more insidious and hidden, in some ways. That is true especially for older students.”

The , for instance, needs 7.4 months of schooling to catch up to pre-pandemic levels in reading, and 9.1 months of schooling in math, according to recent assessments.

Last year’s NAEP scores showed that 30% of eighth graders performed “” in reading; 38% were in math. At the same time, just 2% of students received at school, which Lake called “a massive missed opportunity.” 

In a few places, researchers noted, the pandemic knocked older students off track, as in Washington state, where 14 percent of public high school students received at least during the 2020-2021 school year.

Even college-bound high school students are underperforming: The on the ACT college admission test last year was 19.8, they noted, the lowest since 1991.

Researchers also noted that, overall, college going is down: Between 2019 and 2023, the U.S. higher education system lost an estimated .

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in advance of the report’s release, Lake said recent data on college are “extremely concerning.”

She called for the development of what she calls a “New American High School” that abandons academic tracking and standardized diplomas for a system that helps each student “understand their own conception of a good life” through knowledge and skills. It would also help them more easily change course if needed.

In the report, Lake noted several promising new models, including Colorado’s , designed to help rural districts create career-relevant learning experiences aligned to the needs and aspirations of local economies.

She also highlighted Seckinger High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, a planned artificial intelligence-themed high school that will offer a college prep curriculum “taught through the lens of artificial intelligence.” Students will also be able to pursue an education in developing AI, she said. 

A gap year for struggling students

Lake proposed that high schools and community colleges consider a new kind of post-high school “gap year” designed to help struggling high school graduates get back on track academically and prepare for college and careers. 

“Gap years are oftentimes known for serving as a time for exploration for more advantaged kids,” she said. “Let’s change that.”

The idea is still in development, she said, but could be developed quickly.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we need to get going,” she said.

While high school graduation rates are rising, the researchers said, so is grade inflation — 90% of parents believe their child is actually above grade level in reading and math, according to a March 2023 , making it likely that many students are exiting the K-12 system unprepared for college and careers.

Outside experts who study education systems and secondary education said CRPE’s alarm over the data is justified.

“There’s going to be a long tail of the pandemic,” said Robert Balfanz, a scholar who studies high school as co-director of the at Johns Hopkins University.

He said a key problem from the pandemic is that many students were forced into virtual learning at key points in their education: while making the leap to more challenging reading, for instance, or diving into Algebra or calculus. “Kids that miss core transitional learning, I think, are almost hit twice,” he said. “They have that same amount of learning loss. But you could argue in some ways it was even more strategic of a loss because those are such key building blocks.”

He noted that the best predictor of whether a student will earn a college degree is if they earned “decent grades in challenging courses.” But if they don’t get access to these or don’t learn foundational material, “that’s a problem.”

Unequal access to such coursework, Balfanz said, can push students out of advanced classes.��

He is concerned that during the pandemic, many students who “officially took calculus” or other advanced courses virtually may not have gotten all of the material required. “And those kids are probably already in college.”

In the paper, researchers lamented that our K-12 system “leaves to chance” nearly every aspect of the transition from high school to college and careers, from students discovering their interests and talents to selecting a career pathway aligned to them. 

And few students ever get guidance on how to change careers and find new training or postsecondary opportunities when their interests and priorities shift.

Balfanz said the decline in “postsecondary momentum” could be the result of many factors, including the high cost of college, students who don’t feel well-prepared and a labor market that holds many opportunities for high wages without a college degree.

“I think a combination of those factors is going to push some kids to delay post-secondary,” he said. “And the more you delay it, the odds of success are less.”

Trying to go back to school at that point, he said, is “always challenging.” 

A new kind of report card

Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research () at the American Institutes for Research, said COVID recovery “has not fully happened” in many schools.��

“I’m not feeling super optimistic about pandemic recovery writ large right now,” he said. 

The new CRPE report, he said, demonstrates the “real conundrum” that schools face in communicating with parents: “I think that schools need to convey in more plain English where kids are at,” he said. 

But he said results from large-scale standardized exams “don’t resonate the way that information about their own students would resonate. What we need is for school systems to just be really clear with individual families about when their students are struggling. And I don’t think that school systems typically do that.”

Educators, he said, are typically optimistic about students’ chances of bouncing back — and fearful of being blamed for kids’ academic problems. 

“Schools don’t have a ton of incentive to communicate in ways that might negatively bounce back to them,” he said.

Lake, the CRPE director, said one good way to fix this problem is simply to rethink report cards.

“Parents look to report cards first,” she said. “And report cards need to be able to say how the kids are actually doing — not just that they’re getting a particular grade. Are they mastering the skills that they need to graduate? Are they on track? And so that’s where I’d focus my efforts.”

Linda Jacobson contributed to this report.

Many capable Hispanic, Black and English learner students did not elect to join these classes on their own or were passed over by their instructors. And their parents were often unaware they could make the request. 

Dallas ISD, which serves some 142,000 children, took note of the disparity and in 2017 formed a racial equity advisory council — some of whose members had children in the district — with the goal of improving opportunity for all. 

It decided to move from an opt-in model to an opt-out policy in the 2019-20 school year. Since then, all students who score well on state exams are now automatically enrolled in advanced mathematics, reading, science and social studies — or some combination of the four. Under the current model, students cannot opt out without written parent permission. The move has dramatically increased participation among traditionally marginalized children.

The initiative is particularly consequential in mathematics. It places far more students on track to take eighth-grade algebra, a prerequisite for more advanced coursework in high school. Prior to the shift, only 20% of Dallas ISD 8th graders were enrolled in Algebra I compared to 60% today. 

“We talked about some cold hard facts and part of that was to … increase enrollment in the good stuff and ensure students are going to be successful once we get them in there,” said Shannon Trejo, Dallas ISD’s chief academic officer. “Advanced coursework in high school is a pipeline: You have to get in in middle school. The question was, ‘How do we ensure students who are prepared are enrolling?’”

And the policy has not led to a decrease in student scores as some speculated: Last year’s 8^th-grade Algebra I students had similar pass rates as those in years prior, the district said, with 95% of Hispanic students passing the test and 76% meeting grade-level proficiency; 91% of Black students passing and 65% meeting grade level and 95% of English learner students passing the state exam and 74% meeting grade level. 

Drexell Owusu, chief impact officer at , which connects donors with charitable organizations among other endeavors, said he appreciates the district’s decision to raise the bar for students who’ve shown they are capable of more challenging work. 

“As a parent to three Dallas ISD students, I hold my own children to this standard, knowing that the challenge of advanced coursework is how they will reach higher heights as learners and people,” said Owusu, a member of the district’s advisory council. “As a business and community advocate, I’m thrilled with the increase in success rates for honors courses knowing that this will lead to great jobs and increased living-wage attainment for these students in the future.”

Dallas’s decision to open up its honors classes comes as educators and advocates across the country are reckoning with racial inequities in advanced courses and questioning whether current curricula serve today’s students. Some are urging decision makers to include access at every turn of a child’s academic career and to consider more modern and relevant coursework. 

This is particularly true of calculus, long considered a benchmark of high school success and often perceived as a prerequisite of college admissions — at least for wealthier students who have access to the course, which can be hard to find in Black, Hispanic and impoverished communities.

Like many school districts across the country, Dallas saw its math scores falter in recent years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card.” Eighth-grade math scores dropped by eight points nationally since the test was last administered in 2019, while fourth-grade scores dropped by five points — the largest decreases ever recorded.

The results were less alarming for in Dallas, who saw their scores fall from 265 to 261 and Black students in that grade who saw their marks dip from 252 to 249. The city’s fourth-grade math were about as dire, with Hispanic students in that grade seeing a six-point drop, from from 236 to 230, while Black students slid from 222 down to 218. 

Hispanics make up 71% of Dallas’s student body, Black students account for 20% and English language learners, who the district refers to as emergent bilinguals, make up 49%, according to Dallas ISD’s White students account for 5.5% of total enrollment.

Students of color had been dramatically underrepresented in the district’s advanced programming. Just 33% of Hispanic sixth graders, 17% of Black sixth graders and 31% of English learners in that grade were enrolled in 6^th-grade honors math classes in the school year. Conversely, 51% of white sixth graders took advanced math that year. 

By the 2022-23 school year, 59% of Hispanic sixth graders, 43% of Black sixth graders and 59% of that grade’s English learners were enrolled in 6^th-grade honors math classes. The percentage of white sixth graders in advanced math also grew substantially, to 82%.

In past years, Dallas ISD school board Trustee Ben Mackey said some students weren’t selected for such programs because teachers believed they misbehaved in class. 

“Maybe that kid was acting up because they were not challenged,” he said. “Within two years of this policy, 94% of eligible students are taking these classes. It makes such a drastic difference in terms of whether the student will be college ready and career ready. We need to give every single person a chance to be successful in life, so when they leave us, they are not three steps behind.”

Juany Valdespino-Gaytan, the district’s executive director of engagement services, said the new model helps capture talented students who might not have known about the honors path. 

“The whole premise is that we are really trying to increase access to all students,” she said. “The policy change was our first effort toward that goal, making these courses available to any student and automatically requiring them to opt out. It puts students in a space where they are advocated for based on their performance.”

Trejo, the district’s chief academic officer, said Dallas ISD is tracking outcomes year over year, with a focus on whether students continue on an advanced pathway in high school. 

“I want our kids to graduate and be able to choose among different colleges and among different careers because they have been so well prepared in mathematics that people want them,” Trejo said. 

Currently being studied in a randomized trial at five high schools in and around Oklahoma City and bringing individualized help to 183 students since 2021, the rolled out at a critical moment.

Roughly according to the latest NAEP results, or the Nation’s Report Card — the . Oklahoma’s students scored 10 points below average, outperformed by 43 states. The state has also to fill vacancies.

Researchers high dosage tutoring as a powerful intervention for struggling learners. Beyond academic growth, it has the potential to boost feelings of belonging. A in particular can help students graduate high school, persist through college and earn more later in life. 

Yet many K-12 schools struggle to establish quality in-house tutoring, given the strain on finances and staff. High quality programs are costly, between ongoing training, reasonable compensation and research.

Now in its second year, the program at the University of Oklahoma has honed in on a local solution, looking to expand partnerships between universities and their surrounding K-12 schools.

“It’s going to be an everyday thing until we can catch up as many kids as we can and eliminate the issue altogether in the state,” said program director and veteran educator Cristina Moershel. 

Each tutor is paired with two students for a full 50-minute period, three days a week. They’re compensated $10,000 each year, split between scholarships and stipends.

Marcus Ake, a second year tutor studying meteorology, math and German, starts some periods off the page. He asks students, look around the room, what math do you see? From right angles on white boards to parabolas in desk chairs, “I just want to show everyone else that math is all around.”

Of the 9th grade students served by OU tutors, 42% more than doubled the average expected growth on the NWEA Map math test in just one semester. On average, students gained 3.41 points, over a point beyond the average 2.24. Scores for students at one school grew 8 points, about four times the average.

The jump is a big deal. Students are those most likely to not show huge gains, closing out 8th grade scoring in the 15-25th percentile. But if they continue at this rate, they will reach the 50th by the end of 9th grade. 

“They’re basically beating projections for students who are at the 50th percentile by a full point,” said Daniel Hamlin, professor and lead researcher for the project at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s actually really substantial.” 

Getting creative

Contrary to tutoring programs that support with homework help or replicate a lead teachers’ lessons, OU tutors fill foundational gaps in math that vary student to student. There’s no script: Tutors stop and start wherever students need, pulling a page from mastery instruction.

For many, the starting place is multiplying and dividing fractions, exponents and cubed roots. Others need a refresher on integers and adding like terms before they add variables to the mix. 

Tutors make games and songs for algorithms like the Pythagorean theorem, cut and color code paper to bring life back into what used to feel like confusing, irrational rules like the switch-flip method for dividing fractions.

It’s the individualized attention many wealthy families pay for. But for the hundreds of students now involved, many of whom are first generation or low-income Americans, the support wouldn’t be possible without it being free and during the school day. 

The Stephenson family, who , wanted to target instruction to the kids who most needed support and would not be able to afford it otherwise. Their interest piqued after reading research out of the University of Chicago and Saga Education, which shaped the foundations for OU’s program. 

Recruiting college students to tutor and mentor may also give students faster access to adults that look like them or relate to their life experiences. In the last two years, OU tutors represented 17 countries. This fall semester, 7% identified as Native American or American Indian, 15% as Asian, 15% as Black and 17% as Latino. 

And exposure to college students means exposure to college pathways. Most of the 158 tutors are working toward STEM, economics, or healthcare-related degrees, often able to share with students how they continue to use math everyday, or answer questions about what college actually looks like. 

For first semester tutor and computer engineering student Anurag Rajkumar Doré, the reality check includes breaking down the stigma or shame many kids feel about math. 

“I remember the first couple sessions. They wouldn’t even talk because they were afraid of getting the wrong answer. But I told them, ‘I don’t care if you have the wrong answer as long as you have the right reason,’” Doré said. 

“At the end of the day, math is more about understanding what’s happening than just memorizing steps…when you apply math to the real world, you’re not going to have a list of answers.”

First-time OU tutors go through a three day bootcamp at the start of the semester, learning a mix of pedagogical strategies while refreshing key math concepts. They attend weekly training for one to two hours, planning lessons and getting feedback from each other and veteran educators.  

Those involved say the high-quality training is a key ingredient for the model’s success. 

Doré sometimes messes up on purpose, so his two students see it as normal and practice explaining a different approach. He knows they hesitate with fractions, so naturally he gives bigger and bigger ones. Most recently, 180 over 360 times 35 over 35. The examples drive home the importance of simplifying first — math and many of life’s problems. 

The Initiative is one of three jobs he balances, but he never thinks about giving it up. Some days he feels he’s taught them more about confidence than math.

“I’m able to pay rent because of this program,” Dore said. “I can do all this and I can still help the community.”

Growing pains 

What started at two high schools has now grown to five — two rural, two midsize urban, and one large urban, all with their share of logistical hurdles and lessons learned. 

While the university picks up much of the financial and staffing hurdles, the model leans on high schools to get everyone on the same page so there’s no stigma or misinformation spread. Some parents were apprehensive, for instance, when their child qualified for tutoring.

“It may be that their child in eighth grade had an A in eighth grade math, but then they’re testing in the 20th percentile. Parents may say, ‘Well, my child is doing just fine,’ ” explained lead researcher Hamlin. “There’s a lot of communication that needs to be done with parents and schools and it has to be on an ongoing basis.”

The excitement tutors like Marcus Ake feel on day one is not always shared by students, either. One in particular was chronically absent, sometimes walking the halls. 

“The very first thing they said to me was ‘look, I know I’m bad at math. I don’t need you to tell me that,’ ” he said. 

Ake stressed the truth: “I’m not here for that… I’m literally here to hang out and do some math at the same time. This is low stress.” By the end of the semester, the student showed up every day, and asked if Ake would be there next semester.

Oklahoma has established an , but administrators told The 74 a main draw of this partnership was the fact that it supports students within the school day. 

“You’re going to be really challenged to get kids to skip football practice, or not have their part time job or go home to take a nap,” said Chris Brewster, Superintendent for Santa Fe South schools.

Their high school, he said, was lucky — already offering a foundational math class for students who needed another dose. Accordingly, they didn’t have to hire an outside teacher of record or do any scheduling gymnastics to get kids enrolled.

Some school sites approached for the partnership declined, citing those very barriers. They couldn’t spare a teacher to supervise the period or didn’t want to take away student electives.

“These are very costly interventions. I can’t imagine at this point, if I had to bear that cost,” Brewster added. 

OU is gearing up for the long haul, to establish a center that will serve as a hub for high-dosage tutoring in the state. Talks with other universities have begun, including a March symposium to share training and funding resources, like local foundations, banks and national organizations.

On the research end, the University will look into how the program has affected discipline, attendance, tardiness rates and student GPAs, to publish early findings later this spring. Next year, they’ll study how effective a 3:1 student to tutor pairing can be.

Students say the tutoring is, “giving them confidence in math that they didn’t have before and that the relationship with their tutors is meaningful… something that makes them happy about being at school,” Hamlin added.

Other tutoring offerings often pair students with many instructors, and if virtual, can make it difficult for students to build trust and comfort. 

For Ake, who supports two students with completely opposite learning styles, the common denominator is a human one. They talk school drama, weekend plans, birthdays, track meets or whatever students bring up offhand during the period.  

“Showing an interest in their lives has gone a long way,” he said. “I can show them that I’m not just some stranger but I am someone who cares about them as well.”

According to through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, eighth- and ninth-graders who learned from math teachers with relatively higher performance standards earned better test scores in Algebra I. The same students later saw their improved results carry forward to subsequent years of math instruction, and — contradicting fears that high expectations might cause kids to resist or give up — they were less likely to be absent from classes than similar students assigned to more lax graders. 

Seth Gershenson, an economist at American University and one of the paper’s co-authors, said the breadth and longevity of the positive results showed that they were not flowing from a quirk of testing. Rather, high standards “change the way students engage with school,” he argued.

“There really is a persistent, long-lasting sea change that students experience when they have a tougher grader,” Gershenson said. “And it’s not like you have to be super tough; any marginal increase in standards adds a little boost.”

The findings build on by Gershenson, which showed that pervasive grade inflation in K-12 settings — defined as student course grades that are considerably higher than their corresponding scores on end-of-year exams — is more prevalent in schools serving larger percentages of affluent students. They are also noteworthy in light of the post-COVID academic environment, which has seen many teachers either through personal initiative or in response to district mandates.

The study is built on grading and testing records for a huge swath of North Carolina students who took Algebra I in either the eighth or ninth grades. In all, the sample included over 365,000 pupils across nearly 27,000 classrooms and 4,415 teachers — a rich enough selection to allow comparisons between thousands of similar students assigned to different Algebra teachers over a 10-year span. 

To assess the impact of different standards, Gershenson and his colleagues used multiple measures of grading severity, again relying on the relationship between course grades (over which teachers have wide, though not total, latitude) and performance on end-of-year exams. For example, an Algebra teacher whose students tend to receive higher course grades than their scores would indicate is considered an “easier” grader, and vice versa. 

The researchers then sorted the teacher sample into four comparison groups, ranging from the easiest graders to the hardest, and charted the trajectories of their respective students before and after they took Algebra I. Disproportionately, the teachers grouped in the “toughest” quarter were likelier to be white, female, and more experienced than the sample as a whole. 

They also tended to achieve more in the classroom.

Across several metrics of academic success, students who were exposed to higher grading standards fared better than their peers. Compared with students who had previously demonstrated similar levels of math performance, those assigned to stricter graders saw larger scoring gains. Notably, those effects were both sizable and linear, meaning that the tighter the grading practices — moving from the easiest-grading quarter to the very hardest — the larger the improvement on test scores.

Students of tougher graders also maintained some of their scoring advantage into the next two classes of North Carolina’s math sequence, geometry and Algebra II. The effects were actually twice as large in Algebra II as they were in geometry, a nuance the authors specifically cited in the paper: Perhaps because of the similarities in content between the two levels of algebra, they theorized, students who were formerly held to higher standards did especially well in the later class, even though the effects should have faded more because of the further passage of time. 

“That suggests this wasn’t a pure grade-chasing effect where students crammed more for the test so that they could do better and get the grade they needed,” Gershenson explained. “Instead, it makes me think that there was some real learning that happened and was retained.”

‘Good for everybody’

Though it sets out to measure the benefits of tougher grading policies, the study jibes somewhat with research investigating the inverse phenomenon of grade inflation. According to the , a long-term analysis of student grades conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, the average high school GPA rose from 3.00 in 2009 to 3.11 in 2019. But performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, stayed flat over the same period. 

That federal assessment when it appeared last spring, but it only covered the years before the pandemic. Another report, , found evidence of significant grade inflation over 2020 and 2021, with self-reported student GPAs climbing even as ACT scores themselves did not.

Not all education policy scholars are concerned about these revelations. Zachary Bleemer, a professor of economics at the Yale School of Management, that some grade inflation — whether at the university or K-12 levels — can correct inequalities in which student groups pursue intellectually rigorous subjects. (Female college students, in particular, to discontinue studies in economics if their initial grades are poor.) What’s more, ACT’s hypothesis could rightly be viewed with caution, given the organization’s potential interest in casting high school grades as less reliable than scores on college admissions tests. 

But it is also broadly reflected in accounts given by teachers themselves, who have sometimes as a response to COVID’s disruption to in-person learning. In big districts like , , and (home to Las Vegas), new standards have deemphasized deadlines and classroom behavior, giving students more time and chances to complete graded work.

Education authorities have justified those changes as an equity-minded strategy to keep students engaged who might otherwise become frustrated or fall behind in their studies. But Gershenson and his co-authors found no evidence that North Carolina students assigned to harder graders became alienated from school. In fact, those students were slightly less likely than their peers to rack up unexcused absences.

Best of all, whether measured by attendance or test scores, the results of higher standards were broadly similar for a range of different students. While higher-performing math students enjoyed marginally larger gains than their relatively lower-performing classmates, effects were ultimately beneficial across 20 different student categories — each differing by race, sex, class rank, and prior achievement level in math. 

Gershenson, who sees grade inflation as a significant problem that distorts how scholastic performance is interpreted, said the near-uniformity of his team’s findings was a strong signal that high standards are “good for everybody.”

“For none of these outcomes… is the effect negative. Sure, the effects are smaller for some groups than others, and they’re smaller for some outcomes than others. But on no dimension are students being harmed by higher grading standards.”

Here’s a typical scenario — a student thrives in elementary math, enjoying manipulatives, games and kid-friendly word problems. Then, the tides change. When more abstract thought enters the equation, the student’s once-favorite class becomes a source of anxiety and defeat.

In middle school, students also can hit a learning wall due to unaddressed learning gaps. Even before the pandemic, students were arriving in middle school with learning gaps in basic math concepts, according to Shelly Burr, who supports 42 Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, school districts through the Allegheny Intermediate Unit and serves as a certified coach through Harvard. Those basics that weren’t create barriers to learning new, more complex skills.

Filling those skill gaps while moving through grade-level content is tough.  “It’s challenging for teachers to be able to be teaching grade-level content,” Burr says, noting that sometimes they are having to reteach skills from two or three grade levels prior. Middle school math timelines typically involve learning a new skill daily, which doesn’t account for the progression of skill acquisition, she says.

 While a fresh approach to teacher training is part of the solution, innovative classroom teachers are already making strides in the right direction. Their strategies include using concrete tools to help young minds grasp abstract concepts, giving students choices and shifting mindsets to see mistakes as part of the process.

Teachers Need Guidance to Focus on Key Skills

Burr points out that teachers aren’t necessarily trained to identify the must-have skills at each grade level to remain math-proficient later. If teachers must prioritize mastery of certain skills over others, knowing which are most essential is key.

 A by the Regional Educational Laboratory Program alongside some Missouri education leaders identified five broad categories: ratios and proportional relationships, the number system, expressions and equations, geometry and statistics/probability. Mastery in these areas was most associated with Algebra I success. 

Burr says, “The biggest predictor of algebra success is all the way in terms of their number sense.” 

Concrete tools build abstract understanding

It’s less likely you’ll see students in middle school playing with tiles, making art and working with their hands, but students at this age still need such activities to succeed in math. Burr encourages teachers to use manipulatives, even during middle school, to help students transition from concrete to abstract understanding. She points to tools like base 10 blocks through fifth grade, a fraction manipulative to help kids “see it in different ways” and . 

If a school could choose only one hands-on tool for middle school, she says, algebra tiles are a must-have for everything from helping to visualize integers to solving multi-step equations. The pandemic also showed educators that virtual algebra tiles could work too.  

Classroom Snapshots Light the Way

We took a look at top practices in middle schools around the country, where teachers are actively working to engage students in math and close learning gaps. Here are some of their go-to strategies for reaching middle-schoolers:

Give Gen Z the immediate feedback they’re used to — mistakes and all

Kat Abe, eighth-grade math teacher, Northbrook Middle School, Houston

Using tech tools without direction is like using a Tesla without knowing your destination, Abe jokes. Instead, intentional and immediate feedback through tools like NearPod and Socrative increases engagement and timely improvement in her classroom. She anonymously displays multiple students’ work at once with these tools, working with students to identify what went wrong.

“They’re used to being stimulated by technology and wanting that instant feedback, that immediate gratification that comes from some of these tech tools I’m using,” she says. For Nearpod, she uploads all her lessons, giving feedback in real time. “That’s a lot different from pen and paper … where I’m not reaching all 30 students in the classroom.” She says catching mistakes immediately leads to “intentional discourse” around their work, rather than presenting her own. 

Building a culture where “Mistakes Are Totally Hot,” a math acronym she uses, is normalized because every day students see both mistakes and exemplars. The tech tools she uses lend themselves to naturally catching mistakes as they happen, so students are used to both making them and getting that immediate feedback. She also doesn’t use homework, as students get so much practice and feedback during class.

Drawing from non-math subjects to make the abstract concrete 

Elisa Murphy, director of teaching and learning, New York City Charter School of the Arts

Negative numbers can be challenging for middle-schoolers, Murphy says. “It’s really hard to understand why when you subtract a negative number, it becomes positive … that doesn’t make any sense.” But it’s easier when kids have concrete analogies like submarines going underwater, or making soup hotter or colder with ice cubes. 

Kids also are encouraged to create their own real-life examples of math in action, often with a music or art connection. For example, seventh-grade math teachers wanted students to use proportions in a project. Some used scale factors to enlarge their own drawings. Others played a piece of music to demonstrate  intervals, or the ratio of frequencies in the pitches that make up a musical chord. In a third option, students scaled up a recipe to feed the entire class and then cooked it for everyone to enjoy.

In eighth grade, math teachers used an art project to cement students’ understanding of transversals, lines that intersect two parallel lines, and the angles they create. Students had to look outside the classroom to find examples of transversals in their home or neighborhood. After photographing their example, they used an online protractor to measure the angles formed, observing whether they were complementary or supplementary to each other.

Solving real-world problems 

Jeanne Huybrechts, chief academic office, Stratford School, with multiple California locations

According to a 2022 student poll conducted by Gradient Learning, over usually don’t see the relevance of what they are learning in school. 

“When Stratford middle school students ask their math teachers, ‘Why do we have to learn this?’  we think they deserve an answer,” Huybrechts says. “Teachers regularly integrate real-world problems that illustrate the usefulness of the principles, thus making the math courses seem much more relevant.”

For example, one popular exercise is to design a smartphone and calculate the amount of storage needed.  In another unit, students design a solar panel-covered roof, calculating the pitch necessary to optimize energy capture. She says this helps to alleviate the abstractness of both algebra and geometry courses in middle school.

Setting goals and tracking mastery

Sarah Breslin, assistant principal, Brooklyn Lab Middle School, New York

When Breslin saw a discrepancy between students’ classroom “exit tickets” and their interim assessment performance, she worked with teachers to build a professional development plan. The program, called Shift the Lift, refers to moving the mental load of solving the problems from the teacher to the student. It’s designed to help teachers spot the specific standards that stump students most often and to help them embrace a growth mindset as they work to master them.

Teachers set “hyper-specific goals” for each student, push independent practice and use exit tickets two to three times a week to measure progress toward those goals, she says. The exit tickets measure how well students master the topic at hand and evaluate their work habits. Breslin says that when students begin Shift the Lift, on average, only about 55% meet expectations. Just five weeks later, that number routinely grows to 89%.

Letting students decide how to demonstrate their understanding

Ashley Barattini and April Regan, eighth-grade co-teachers, The Urban Assembly School for Leadership & Empowerment, Brooklyn

It’s not every day you see a summative assessment in the form of a podcast, brochure, Tik Tok or sewing project. But that’s the norm for Barattini and Regan’s students, where choice is a fundamental aspect of increasing engagement in middle school math. Barattini recalls a student last year who looked at the options for testing and instead proposed an embroidery project demonstrating her new math knowledge. The teachers were more than happy to oblige. 

From scavenger hunts to stations, mini-lessons with the whole group to smaller learning groups, “giving them options to show their knowledge and show the way they’re learning math and making sense of it” is key, Regan says. Lessons in their classroom last a maximum of 10 minutes, and they give homework only every few weeks, around five to six questions, one from each lesson they’ve recently taught for extra practice. 

Says Regan, “I love hearing at the end of an activity, a student being like, ‘Actually, this was really fun today.’”

This piece originally appeared on .

It’s critical for student success in college and beyond. 

It’s an unnecessary barrier meant to keep students of color from higher education. 

That’s the argument on both sides of a long-standing debate about algebra. 

There is, however, consensus on a few key issues: Race and wealth play a role in how and when the course is offered in K-12 and students’ failure to pass the course by high school or college has long kept them from graduating — and qualifying for high-paying jobs.

They agree, too, that the pandemic, which tanked math scores nationwide and stunted students’ social skills, leading to that continue to hinder learning, has left young people particularly vulnerable. 

What they do not agree upon is a solution. While some say schools should double down on the course and offer it to all children starting in the eighth grade, others say it’s time to drop higher-level algebra as a graduation requirement and provide students with another path, one made up of more practical mathematics coursework that would not prohibit them from pursuing their education. 

“What is so magical about algebra as a math requirement?” asked Eloy Ortiz Oakley, former chancellor of California’s community college system. It’s a gatekeeper to virtually every type of credential and transfer in higher education, he said, calling it a “killing field” for low-income students and those of color. “One could argue that it is becoming a barrier as soon as eighth grade given the push to make algebra a requirement.”

High school freshman Mia Miron, 14, who currently has a C+ in algebra, doesn’t understand how the subject will help build her career: Miron, who lives in Pomona, California, hopes to become a chef, a hairdresser or to pursue ethnic studies. 

“There are some lessons that are harder than others, but I’m not perfect in understanding,” she said. “Math to me is not my favorite subject and I don’t think it could help me in my future.”

While some advocate for universal eighth-grade algebra, many children don’t have access to the course that early: It’s often available only to white, more well-off students based upon test scores, teacher recommendations, previous years’ grades and parent choice — all of which benefit the affluent. 

Data obtained by The 74 show that just 31,400 eighth-graders took the Algebra Regents exam in New York City in 2022: 72% passed with a 65 or higher. There were roughly 64,500 eighth graders in the city school system in the 2021-22 school year, excluding those in charters, marking a 48% participation rate. 

Nearly 37% of eighth graders in Broward County, Florida, less than 22% in Baltimore City Public Schools and 21% in Phoenix’s Paradise Valley Unified School District were enrolled in the course most recently. In Seattle Public Schools, 37% of eighth graders take algebra, as do hundreds of seventh graders. Many districts only offer the class to eighth graders deemed advanced.��

Students in the McAllen Independent School District, for example, must earn roughly 86% on their seventh grade end-of-year state math exam to qualify for a blended math course in which they learn eighth-grade mathematics in the first semester and, if they are successful, algebra in the second. Just 23% of its eighth-grade class is enrolled in the course, district officials told The 74: Administrators there said the number dipped as a result of COVID. 

Both Baltimore and New York City schools say they hope to boost participation. 

Algebra’s proponents say failure to offer rigorous mathematics coursework early in a child’s educational career is a civil rights violation. 

“The relationship between math and science is very strong,” said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director and founder of , a group which aspires to prepare and retain 150,000 new STEM teachers, especially for schools serving majority Black, Hispanic and Native American students, by 2032. “A whole set of careers would be closed off to them — all of which happened to be some of the fastest growing and highest paying. From an equity perspective, it’s almost untenable.”

William Crombie is the director of professional development at , an organization founded by civil rights icon and mathematics educator Robert P. Moses. The group uses mathematics literacy as an organizing tool to boost the quality of education for American schoolchildren, focusing on the most underserved middle and high school students, who too often also score low on standardized tests. 

Crombie said that while algebra is an expected offering for eighth-grade students in “well-to-do, suburban communities,” it’s much harder to find elsewhere. “In urban and even rural high schools, they are struggling to accomplish algebra in the 9th grade.”

But, he said, there is no logical reason to accept the inequity: If wealthy children can learn these concepts, so can others.

“Unless people believe in some very strange distribution of talent in the human species, if that upper decile can do it, it’s incumbent upon us to find the proper opportunities for learning so that all students can do it,” he said. 

But Boaz Barak, a computer science professor at Harvard University, said uneven access to rigorous mathematics is just one part of a much larger and persistent problem. 

“This is not math specific,” he said, adding a gap in math scores between two groups of students often means a gap in other academic areas, including reading. 

And while some might want an alternative pathway, Barak urges against it. 

“The problem is that sometimes people try to solve the gap by claiming that the issue is with math itself,” he said. “Then you have counterproductive and harmful policies that try to fix equity by trying to lower the ceiling and remove advanced math options for everyone, or replace them with superficial areas like ‘data science.’”

Such courses, while marketed as alternative pathways, are really “off-ramps” from any quantitative major in college, Barak said. Data science is “a great field,” he added, but for students to grasp the concept, they need a background in statistics, computer science and math: linear algebra and some calculus. 

“This means that it can’t be taught properly at the high school level,” he said. “What you can teach is a data literacy course, which teaches you basic tools such as spreadsheets and some notions about plotting data and correlations. The latter is a fine course to teach — but it’s not a math course.”

Both and are changing — and, in some cases lowering — math standards so that students meet basic requirements for high school graduation. The plans are controversial with some saying such modifications will leave students unprepared for the future.

School-aged children are already in the midst of an academic crisis and face dire predictions about their financial futures: They could suffer hundreds of billions of dollars in lost earnings throughout their .

Crombie, of The Algebra Project, believes challenging, relevant coursework will help them meet their academic goals: He encourages students to model the importance of mathematics education by serving as math tutors, mentors and advisors to their peers. And his organization wants teachers to have adequate time during the school day — and support during the summer — to work with each other to deepen their understanding of the subject and improve classroom practices. 

Schools, the group contends, should give struggling students the tools they need to succeed rather than relying upon older, failed methods. 

Teacher training and retention also cannot be ignored, Crombie said. 

“The strongest teachers are often pulled out to better-paying suburban districts,” he said. 

Ortiz Oakley understands the challenges schools and students face but believes algebra is not the answer. He recognizes the importance of the subject for a calculus-based pathway in math at the high school and college level — and its relevance to STEM. 

But what, he asked, is the relevance to the humanities and social sciences? 

“That is what we are questioning,” said Ortiz Oakley, who left his community college post last summer to head , an equity-focused higher education group. “There is no doubt this is a vestige of exclusionary tactics rooted in racism and discrimination. We’ve seen that repeatedly in this country.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to and The 74.

To learn the geometric concept of transformations this year, Crystal Watson’s eighth-graders drew up blueprints of apartments. As they worked, she asked them to imagine designing affordable housing for Black and Hispanic families like theirs in Cincinnati who have been priced out of their neighborhoods.

But when she had them add a hallway down the middle of their floor plans, with apartments on either side, some struggled with the idea of reflection — flipping a figure to create a mirror image.

“There are still kids who mix up their x and y axis,” said Watson, who teaches at Hartwell School.

At that point, she pulled students aside individually to explain the difference and offered tips for remembering. Her strategy — connecting math to socio-economic issues in the community and letting students proceed even if they haven’t mastered the skills — is captured in that gives teachers steps for “dismantling racism” in math instruction.

But the book’s claim that a focus on producing the right answer promotes “white supremacy culture” alarmed some who question how inaccuracy in math could benefit students. And, partly in response to the controversy, California state board members recently recommended against incorporating the resource into a redesign of the state’s math program.

While history and literature seem like obvious battlegrounds for schools to address the effects of racial discrimination, some might question whether math — where achievement depends on precise calculations — is the appropriate venue for such fights. Those devoted to greater equity say the middle grades are a period when many Black and Hispanic students begin to turn off of math, only to continue struggling through high school. But the suggestion that answers to math problems are subjective became easy fodder for culture war conservatives.

“Math enjoyed this notion that it was somehow above the influence of the cultural and political issues of our time,” said Rachel Ruffalo, the director of educator engagement at The Education Trust-West, the Oakland-based advocacy group that created the workbook.

Now, that is changing. The workbook is part of the organization’s larger — one that seeks to address persistent racial disparities in achievement. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the $1 million initiative last spring as part of focused on making algebra more accessible to students of color, partly in response to learning disruptions caused by the pandemic. Districts in Georgia, Ohio and California are among those using the workbook in teacher training.

Conservative Fox News lampooned, sometimes out of context, a handful of the book’s ideas — for example, the notion that key teaching practices such as requiring students to show their work and complete assignments individually are based in racism. appeared in mid-February after the Oregon Department of Education teachers to a training featuring the book. The Fox piece sparked in other outlets and from columnists, most of whom neglected to mention that the authors later say, “Of course, most math problems have correct answers.”

Erec Smith, a professor of rhetoric and composition at York College of Pennsylvania and co-founder of , is among those who accuse the book’s authors of their own form of bigotry.

“The workbook’s ultimate message is clear: Black kids are bad at math, so why don’t we just excuse them from really learning it,” said Smith, who is Black.

Even leaders of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have reservations about the guide — though their reasons differ.

“Are we building bridges or throwing grenades?” asked David Barnes, associate executive director of the council. “When you get to page two and what’s bolded is ‘dismantling white supremacy,’ there are some people that cannot read past that.”

Other groups came to Oregon’s defense, offering positive reactions to the book and its broader effort to make math more culturally relevant for students of color.

“You and I were taught that everything happened in Greece,” said Kristopher Childs, director of Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit focusing on academic success for historically underserved students. “Every culture and civilization contributed to mathematics. Students need to know that.”

The authors, for example, prompt teachers to have students explore the Egyptian and Babylonian roots of the Pythagorean Theorem, before Pythagoras identified it in Greece during the 6th century B.C.

The guide draws inspiration from another document titled which includes what some scholars on race argue are characteristics of “white supremacy culture” — ideals such as perfectionism, individualism and a sense of urgency they say allowed early American colonists to dominate over African slaves and Native Americans.

‘Room for creativity’

Samuel Rhodes, an assistant professor of elementary math education at Georgia Southern University, said focusing only on the right answer can at times be counterproductive. In a course last year for future K-8 teachers, he called on a student who gave a wrong answer to a problem.

He said he could have done what he’s observed in countless public school classrooms — go on to the next student until someone answered correctly, or repeat the steps.

But with that strategy, a “student … just immediately shuts down,” Rhodes said. “Now they have to ignore everything they were thinking with the goal of trying to understand how the other students did it.”

Instead, he asked the student how she arrived at that answer and learned she had a “creative, brilliant process” for finding the solution, but got derailed by a small computation mistake.

“There’s no room for creativity when there is a fixation on the answer,” he said.

But knowing whether a student is “wildly wrong” or “off by just a hair” takes deep expertise in math — something teachers, especially those at the elementary level — don’t always have, said Jay Wamsted, a longtime Atlanta math teacher working in high schools serving predominantly Black and HIspanic students.

He added, “It’s not obvious to the layperson why ‘the right answer’ isn’t always preferable and the workbook needs to be clear about why that is.”

While the workbook discourages teachers from asking students to “’show their work’ in … prescribed ways,” it does recommend that students have multiple options for demonstrating what they understand.

That’s a shift Lisa Owens, another Cincinnati math teacher, is still trying to make.

“For me, that was letting go of control. For a lot of teachers, that is where the issue is,” said Owens. But she said she’s learned to spot shallow attempts at cultural relevance. “You can’t just put an ethnic name into a word problem.”

Beginning her career in a Chicago suburb, she said she “was raised that you don’t see color.” But now Owens, who is white, teaches at Roberts Academy, which serves a predominantly Black and Hispanic population. She helped start a school equity coalition and opposed the school’s former practice of tracking fourth graders into low and high classes based on math scores.

She recognizes the hurdles involved in meeting the guide’s definition of an “antiracist math educator.” Allowing students to arrive at mistakes on their own can take up valuable class time, and a lot of teachers, she said, still take a “tough love” approach and question whether such methods would improve test scores. According to state data, less than 10 percent of the eighth graders in the school score proficient in math.

‘The role of education’

Teaching practices like those in the workbook have been part of the San Francisco Unified School District’s shift in math instruction since 2014. That’s when the district stopped separating students into basic or Algebra I classes in middle school — a controversial policy that California is now considering statewide. The state will continue to collect public comments over the summer, and the state board will make a final decision in November. Advocates for gifted students are the proposed changes.

So far, administrators using the workbook have had a receptive audience of educators committed to “social justice math.” But when they try to spread those ideas among colleagues at their schools, they often face resistance.

“Challenging the status quo is not easy for a lot of teachers,” said Bernadette Andres-Salgarino, math coordinator for the Santa Clara County Office of Education in California.

The guide caused enough of a storm in California that members of the state board advised its Instructional Quality Commission, which is drafting the to remove references to it.

While Barnes, with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, thought the guide used “words that immediately divide,” he appreciates the intent behind it — an effort to make math more accessible for students of color and give them a strong foundation when they enter high school.

It complements, he said, the push in California and to de-track math by keeping students in the same courses at least through the eighth grade. Virginia is considering changes.

less than 20 percent of Black students take Algebra 1 by eighth grade, compared to 67 percent of Asian students and 45 percent of white students. And even if they take higher-level math in middle school, Black students are less likely than white and Asian students to stay on an accelerated track in high school.

The pandemic has set students of color even further behind. from testing provider Renaissance showed that while all students performed below pre-pandemic levels in math, the decline was greatest among Black and Hispanic students. And on a national scale, the between Black and white eighth-graders hasn’t budged in years.

Williamson Evers, a former U.S. Department of Education official during the second Bush administration and a senior fellow at the conservative Independent Institute, suggested the social justice approach to math will put U.S. students further behind those in other countries.

“Our kids are going to be competing in a world with kids that have this in their heads. They’re doing better. They have the material under their belt,” he said during a . His in the Wall Street Journal ran before California state board members turned their back on the workbook.

Josie McSpadden, a spokeswoman at the Gates Foundation, defended the project.

“At times, research has shown that racial bias and student mindsets can affect student academic achievement,” she said, adding the workbook, “highlights a critical discussion — how students arrive at answers and demonstrate their understanding and conceptual grasp of important math concepts.”

This fall in Cincinnati, math teachers throughout the district will walk through the practices recommended in the guide. Watson — who plays clean versions of rap songs in her class when students finish an assessment — said math is usually “so cut and dried.” The resource gives teachers ways to incorporate students’ opinions and family stories into her lessons.

“I don’t have to be an anti-racism and anti-bias guru,” she said, “to pick this up and do what’s good for kids.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to and The 74.

Lead Art: A math teacher works with a student at Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School in San Francisco. The district is among those working to address racial disparities in math achievement.  (Lea Suzuki / The San Francisco Chronicle / Getty Images)