The cover story for the Winter 2025 edition of the NACAC Journal of College Admission, cites Just Equations’ report, The Limits of Calculus: Revisiting the Role of Math Education in College Admissions. The report, released in December 2024 in collaboration with the National Association for College Admission Counseling, found that calculus remains the gold standard for college admissions, despite significant and persistent inequitable access for underserved students.
The article also cites the 2022 joint Just Equations/NACAC report, A New Calculus for College Admissions: How Policy, Practice, and Perceptions of High School Math Education Limit Equitable Access to College, which explores evolving views of the role that math plays in education and college admissions.
For years, students with calculus on their high school transcripts have had an advantage in college admission. This has created an equity issue, as nearly half of U.S. public high schools don’t even offer calculus.
Research is finding that’s a problem for two reasons: Using a calculus benchmark to differentiate students creates inequitable access to college, and it creates an environment where math is used to measure students against one another rather than to develop an informed citizenry and workforce based on the needs of today.
Beyond the inequities, experts point to workforce changes as another reason to reevaluate if exposure to calculus coursework is an appropriate measure of a student’s potential.
According to the 2022 report by NACAC and Just Equations, statistics and data science subjects are likely more meaningful for many students’ lives and career goals. Data science, for example, is a flourishing, modern profession that uses statistical models and programming to answer questions using real-world data.
“Offerings in data science, discrete math, and statistics have the potential to promote students’ quantitative reasoning skills and readiness for college learning. Until these newer sequences are considered on par with the calculus path, they will remain in the shadow of calculus,” according to the Just Equations/NACAC report.
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