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“A century ago it was Greek and Latin. Today, it’s the quadratic formula.” That’s what Opportunity Institute founder Christopher Edley, Jr. told the PBS NewsHour about how mathematics requirements can serve as arbitrary educational filters that disproportionately hurt kids who have less access to advanced instruction.

California State University is preparing to unveil a proposal to require an additional, fourth year of math or quantitative reasoning for admission to any of its 23 campuses. Some proponents have argued that such a policy will help reduce gaps in preparation across racial and ethnic groups.

At last week’s meeting with their trustees, California State University officials shared positive early results of the system’s new way of ensuring the math proficiency of incoming students. This is good news for the 23-campus system and, especially, for the thousands of students who will no longer be subjected by tests of questionable validity to remedial algebra sequences that may be irrelevant...

In her first blog post of 2019, our founder Pamela Burdman reveals the good news in data CSU recently shared with Just Equations: As of last fall, the system had succeeded in eliminating traditional remedial courses. Just Equations awaits more data from CSU to answer more questions about math opportunity for California students.

The architecture of math opportunity is “undergirded by misconceptions about math learning, scaffolded by existing educational inequities and stereotypes, and reinforced by math’s role as a marker or pedigree that confers access to opportunities”, according to a Medium blog by Just Equations Senior Project Director, Pamela Burdman.