Blog

My interest in redesigning math pathways dates back at least a dozen years. While working on improving student opportunities and outcomes at California community colleges, I came to realize how required mathematics courses—especially remedial algebra courses— were in fact limiting those opportunities and outcomes.

After years of debates over their validity, the SAT and ACT were removed quite abruptly last year from most colleges’ admissions requirements. Though their elimination—spurred by the cancellation of test administrations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic—was temporary in many cases, it could become a permanent state of affairs for some institutions.

Tracking in mathematics has been a practice in U.S. schools for decades, but it hasn’t always been the subject of candid conversation. Along with increased attention to systemic racism in our public discourse, the perils of tracking and its racialized outcomes are growing more visible—and the appeals for its eradication more vocal.

A recent report analyzing how and whether reforms to postsecondary mathematics are advancing equity carries important lessons for those of us working to reverse decades of inequitable math outcomes. Before turning to the findings of the report, from the Community College Research Center, let’s first consider the sources of math inequity.

Work to address inequitable math outcomes begins in the classroom, but it can’t end there. Given the prevalence of policies like tracking—which disproportionately place students of color into lower-level, often dead-end, math sequences—math equity includes examining how students are steered toward math classes in the first place.