The Power of Numbers: Math as a Gateway to Equitable Student Outcomes

DEI is more than an acronym being weaponized for political gain and cultural division. As Stacey Abrams, former candidate for Georgia governor, recently pointed out: “DEI is everywhere, and we spend so much time talking about the theory but … don’t talk about the practice.” Abrams, founder of American Pride Rises, is leading a national effort to do just that. The movement aims to protect pathways to opportunity for every community at a moment in which anti-DEI forces are intent on shoring up structures that benefit only a select few.

For too long, math education in the United States has served as one of those structures, a gatekeeper to educational opportunity, particularly for historically underrepresented students. Just Equations seeks to shift the role of math from gatekeeper to gateway. This begins with understanding how and why math education contributes to inequity. 

Our report The Mathematics of Opportunity highlights how the traditional architecture of math opportunity is undergirded by misconceptions about math ability, scaffolded by existing inequities and stereotypes, and reinforced by the use of math as a pedigree. This design, instead of supporting all students to gain the quantitative reasoning skills they need, narrows the pathway to opportunity. 

Don’t just take my word for it. There are multiple concrete examples, starting with access to advanced high school math courses. Research has repeatedly revealed inequities in access. Even when only high-achieving students are considered, Black, Latinx, and low-income students are disproportionately left out of the courses that support college preparation. 

For another example, take the traditional use of college placement exams to assign students to multiple terms of remedial math courses. For many, this means repeating algebra courses they passed in high school, creating additional barriers to earning a college degree—regardless of whether those courses had any relevance to students’ eventual majors. 

And consider the role that math requirements play in access to college. AP Calculus, an advanced high school math course designed to prepare students for STEM majors, is often used as an arbitrary admissions screen, even though nearly half (47 percent) of high schools do not offer any form of calculus. Using a single course that is not available to all students and not educationally necessary for the majority who will be non-STEM majors is far from fair or equitable.

Equitable math education means policies and practices that promote quantitative literacy and expand, not ration, opportunity. As leading mathematician and math reformer Uri Treisman has posited: “There are two factors that shape inequality in this country. … The big one is poverty. But a really big one is the opportunity to learn. As citizens, we need to work on poverty and income inequality or our democracy is threatened. As mathematics educators … we need to work on the opportunity to learn. It cannot be that the accident of where a child lives or the particulars of their birth determine their mathematics education.” 

Fortunately, many of us are working to design and deliver a modern mathematics of opportunity rooted in the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Policies such as automatic enrollment, updated college placement policies, college math requirements that align with students’ majors, and updated admissions policies are helping to expand equitable access to quantitative reasoning skills and to college opportunity. We’re seeing the power of numbers in practice, shaping a diverse and competitive workforce that is prepared to face and solve society’s most pressing challenges.