From suburbs in the Northeast to major US cities on the West Coast, a surprising subject is prompting ballot measures, lawsuits and bitter fights among parents: algebra. Students have been required for decades to learn to solve for the variable x, and to find the slope of a line. Most complete the course in their first year of high school. But top-achievers are sometimes allowed to enroll earlier, typically in eighth grade.
The dual pathways inspire some of the most fiery debates over equity and academic opportunity in American education: Do bias and inequality keep Black and Latino children off the fast track? Should middle schools eliminate algebra to level the playing field?
The questions are so fraught because algebra functions as a crucial crossroads in the education system – students who fail it are far less likely to graduate.Those who take it early can take calculus by 12th grade, giving them a potential edge when applying to elite universities and lifting them toward society’s most high-status and lucrative professions.
But racial and economic gaps in math achievement are wide in the US, and grew wider during the pandemic. In some states, nearly 4 in 5 poor children do not meet math standards. To close those gaps, former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio adopted a goal embraced by many districts elsewhere. Every middle school would offer algebra, and principals could opt to enrol entire eighth graders in the class.
San Francisco took an opposite approach: If some children could not reach algebra by middle school, no one would be allowed to take it.
The central mission in both cities was to help disadvantaged students. But solving the algebra dilemma can be more complex than solving the quadratic formula.
New York’s dream of “algebra for all” was never fully realized, and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration changed the goal to improving outcomes for ninth graders taking algebra. In San Francisco, dismantling middle-school algebra did little to end racial inequities among students in advanced math classes. After a huge public outcry, the district decided to reverse course.
“You wouldn’t think that there could be a more boring topic in the world,” said Thurston Domina, a professor at the University of North Carolina. “And yet, it’s this place of incredibly high passions.”
‘Things run hot,’ he said.
In some cities, disputes over algebra have been so intense that parents have sued school districts, protested outside mayors’ offices and campaigned for the ouster of school board members. Teaching math in middle school is a challenge for educators in part because that is when the material becomes more complex, with students moving from multiplication tables to equations and abstract concepts. Students who have not mastered the basic skills can quickly become lost, and it can be difficult for them to catch up.
Many school districts have traditionally responded to divergent achievement levels by separating children into distinct pathways, placing some in general math classes while offering others algebra as an accelerated option. Such sorting, known as tracking, appeals to parents who want their children to reach advanced math as quickly as possible.
But tracking has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on inequality. Around a quarter of all students in the United States take algebra in middle school. But only about 12% of Black and Latino eighth graders do, compared with roughly 24% of white pupils, a federal report found.
“That’s why middle school math is this flashpoint,” said Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University. “It’s the first moment where you potentially make it very obvious and explicit that there are knowledge gaps opening up.”
The dual pathways inspire some of the most fiery debates over equity and academic opportunity in American education: Do bias and inequality keep Black and Latino children off the fast track? Should middle schools eliminate algebra to level the playing field?
The questions are so fraught because algebra functions as a crucial crossroads in the education system – students who fail it are far less likely to graduate.Those who take it early can take calculus by 12th grade, giving them a potential edge when applying to elite universities and lifting them toward society’s most high-status and lucrative professions.
But racial and economic gaps in math achievement are wide in the US, and grew wider during the pandemic. In some states, nearly 4 in 5 poor children do not meet math standards. To close those gaps, former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio adopted a goal embraced by many districts elsewhere. Every middle school would offer algebra, and principals could opt to enrol entire eighth graders in the class.
San Francisco took an opposite approach: If some children could not reach algebra by middle school, no one would be allowed to take it.
The central mission in both cities was to help disadvantaged students. But solving the algebra dilemma can be more complex than solving the quadratic formula.
New York’s dream of “algebra for all” was never fully realized, and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration changed the goal to improving outcomes for ninth graders taking algebra. In San Francisco, dismantling middle-school algebra did little to end racial inequities among students in advanced math classes. After a huge public outcry, the district decided to reverse course.
“You wouldn’t think that there could be a more boring topic in the world,” said Thurston Domina, a professor at the University of North Carolina. “And yet, it’s this place of incredibly high passions.”
‘Things run hot,’ he said.
In some cities, disputes over algebra have been so intense that parents have sued school districts, protested outside mayors’ offices and campaigned for the ouster of school board members. Teaching math in middle school is a challenge for educators in part because that is when the material becomes more complex, with students moving from multiplication tables to equations and abstract concepts. Students who have not mastered the basic skills can quickly become lost, and it can be difficult for them to catch up.
Many school districts have traditionally responded to divergent achievement levels by separating children into distinct pathways, placing some in general math classes while offering others algebra as an accelerated option. Such sorting, known as tracking, appeals to parents who want their children to reach advanced math as quickly as possible.
But tracking has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on inequality. Around a quarter of all students in the United States take algebra in middle school. But only about 12% of Black and Latino eighth graders do, compared with roughly 24% of white pupils, a federal report found.
“That’s why middle school math is this flashpoint,” said Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University. “It’s the first moment where you potentially make it very obvious and explicit that there are knowledge gaps opening up.”