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It’s time to push reset on the controversy in California over whether college students should take calculus. For more than a year, the debate has been centered on an enrollment pattern pursued by a tiny minority of students—the one-half of 1 percent of STEM majors who take a calculus course despite no record of having taken Algebra II in high school. 

Far too many students see their dreams of future majors and careers dashed by math’s role as a gatekeeper to opportunity. It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead, math education can become a gateway to opportunity for all students. That’s precisely why Just Equations is rolling out Math That Meets the Moment: A Policy Agenda To Reenvision the Role of Math in Ensuring Educational Equity.

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. 

Did you know that only about a third of U.S. bachelor’s graduates earn degrees in a major that requires a calculus course? This may surprise some in the education world, since high school math sequences are often oriented toward preparing students for calculus as an indicator of college readiness. 

Math literacy is more than the ability to solve for x. It is foundational for justice, for full participation in society and for the flourishing of democracy—government for the people, by the people.