Opportunities Denied: High Achieving Black and Latino Students Lack Access to Advanced Math

Success in math doesn’t always translate into equitable education opportunities, especially for Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds.

And that only highlights the racial, ethnic, and income disparities in academic success at a time when underrepresented students need equitable resources more than ever. 

Opportunities Denied: High Achieving Black and Latino Students Lack Access to Advanced Math, a new brief by The Education Trust and Just Equations, examines research into students’ math experiences and recommends policy changes that will address long-standing institutional challenges that deny underrepresented students access to advanced math courses. 

Data examined by Just Equations National Policy Director Melodie Baker, Ed Trust Director for P–12 Data & Analytics Ivy Morgan, and UCLA graduate student Gizella Wade made clear that high-achieving Black, Latino, and low-income students who take and pass Algebra I in eighth grade still end up taking advanced math courses at lower rates than their peers. 

Access to higher-level math in high school is critical to a student’s postsecondary education success. Students who take these advanced courses have a higher likelihood of graduating from high school, getting accepted into college, and graduating from college.