Pamela Burdman, Just Equations’ executive director, and Rachel Ruffalo, Ed Trust-West’s senior director of strategic advocacy, examine continued inequities in the placement of students of color and low-income students in advanced math courses that have the potential to boost their chances of admission to certain colleges.
In an op-ed for EdSource, Burdman and Ruffalo look to more equitable solutions showing promise across the country.
Enrolling students in high school math courses is a high-stakes endeavor with an outsize effect on students’ college opportunities and even on their entire careers.
The pressure to reach calculus by a student’s senior year of high school often translates into pressure to take Algebra I, the first course in a five-course sequence, by eighth grade.
But the benefits of eighth-grade math acceleration are neutralized when students who perform well in Algebra I are nevertheless required to repeat that course in ninth grade. Students of color and low-income students face that predicament disproportionately under their schools’ placement practices.
While California has been in the dark about students’ math enrollment patterns, numerous other states have adopted automatic enrollment policies. Under such policies, students who meet a certain benchmark in math are automatically enrolled in an advanced math course the following year. Such enrollment policies have shown promise to address the very problem California lawmakers set out to fix nearly a decade ago.
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