Advancing a Mathematics of Opportunity

Lecturer and supervisor of secondary mathematics at the University of California, San Diego, Erica Heinzman authors a post on Just Equations’ 2022 The Mathematics of Opportunity conference session “Centering Equity in Data Science Education.” Heinzman notes that the session brought together students, instructors, researchers, and textbook authors to illuminate the viability of data science pathways for students and evince the integral importance of equity, community, and accessibility in data science curricula.

In a commentary for EdSource, Executive Director Pamela Burdman calls for ensuring routes to STEM fields for historically excluded students, while also making other rigorous math courses available in high school, to allow students to deepen quantitative skills in relevant ways. The debate over California’s math framework, with its myopic focus on which advanced math courses are best for students, glosses over the glaring fact that the majority of California seniors take no advanced math course at all, she notes.

In an op-ed for the Hechinger Report, Veronica Anderson, co-author of Just Equations' report “A New Calculus for College Admissions,” notes how entrenched beliefs about calculus as a sign of rigor can still play a significant role in admissions. She argues that there are other routes, including statistics and data science, for high school students to gain the quantitative reasoning skills that prepare them for college and the workplace.

EdSource quotes Just Equations Founder and CEO Pamela Burdman on the race to calculus and the viability of alternate math pathways in this article on California’s revised math frameworks, which have an important focus on advancing math equity and expanding math courses to reflect the use of mathematics in the 21st century.