Too many students forced to retake algebra
California’s pursuit of algebra for all is becoming algebra forever for too many students.
A new study sponsored by the Noyce Foundation that looked into the dark art of math placement found that unexplainably large numbers of eighth grade Algebra students are being assigned to repeat Algebra in high school, to their detriment. At least half of these students end up doing worse in the course the second time around. A high proportion of the repeaters are non-Asian minority students, the data indicate.
The Noyce Foundation is due to release its Pathways Study later this month. The lead researchers presented the findings at the second of three forums on “Closing the Achievement Gap in Silicon Valley,” co-sponsored by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The study was limited to nine school districts in the Bay Area, but there’s no reason to doubt the same pattern isn’t statewide. The implication is that subjective and restrictive math placement policies are inhibiting students from pursuing and qualifying for a four-year state university.
The filters also may be turning students off to technical and scientific careers by branding them as math failures early in high school. Steve Waterman, a retired Bay Area superintendent and lead researcher, went as far as to tell the Silicon Valley audience that the Valley wouldn’t have to import so many engineers if schools stopped disenfranchising students from higher math. It’s that serious a problem.
California is alone among states in promoting universal Algebra I for eighth graders. From 2003 to 2008, the number of eighth graders enrolled in Algebra increased 63 percent, to 247,000, and the number of students who passed the state Algebra I test increased 76 percent. The rate of proficiency actually rose from 39 percent to 42 percent. 
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Meanwhile, the debate rages whether many eighth graders are prepared for algebra. The California School Boards Assn. and the Assn. of California School Administrators have sued the State Board of Education over the universal Algebra policy. The issue remains in court.
Slightly more than half of students statewide and in the nine-district Noyce study took Algebra I in eighth grade last year. Researchers found that 65 percent of the nearly 2,000 students studied were reassigned Algebra or Honors Algebra (some schools didn’t offer the latter) in ninth grade instead of Geometry. Even 35 percent of the students who got a B- or better grade were required to repeat the course. And most surprising – or shocking — 60 percent of students who scored proficient or advanced on the CST, the standardized algebra test, were forced to repeat in ninth grade.
Passing Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to high school. As Waterman pointed out, getting through it puts a student on a path for Advanced Placement math as a senior and, as importantly, places the students in a network of serious students that can counter negative peer influences while encouraging one another to do well. The converse, unfortunately, appears true, too, when students view themselves as math failures and repeat algebra, often using the same curriculum and same textbook. Half of the students who got at least a B- in eighth grade algebra did no better or worse the second time around.
Districts and schools differ in how they decide whether students get placed in Algebra I and subsequently in Geometry. Some go by grades, others by teachers’ and counselors’ recommendations and standardized test scores – or a combination of all of them. Some high schools give their own placement exams. Decisions on ninth grade placement begin early in the spring of eighth grade, months before results on standardized tests are known, so that master schedules can be made. High school schedulers would have to be flexible to reassign students once the CST results are known in August.
Then there are unknowable factors – parental pressure, unconscious ethnic or racial bias, and tensions between middle and high school teachers — that go into the black box of decision-making. There are correlations between race, ethnicity and parents’ education – but not, interestingly enough, gender — in which students are selected for Algebra in eighth grade, the study found. Asians, whites and children whose parents have college degrees were disproportionately chosen.
The study numbers were smaller – and perhaps less reliable – in examining those students with a B- or better in Algebra I a year later. More Asians were assigned Geometry than Hispanics or whites (too few African Americans were in the study sample to draw conclusions).
The researchers speculated that some middle school teachers were too conservative in their recommendations, passing along only their best students for geometry; some have been castigated by high school teachers for recommending too many.
David Foster, director of the Silicon Valley Math Initiative for the Noyce Foundation, noted that English teachers don’t apply similar restrictive criteria to deny students from taking freshman English. High school math teachers, he said, have to change their belief systems.
“Math teachers seem to believe their role in life is to separate wheat from the chaff,” he told me, referring to the large numbers of Algebra repeaters. “There is no other discipline where failing half kids every year is seen as anything but failure.”
(I will pass on the url for the study as soon as it is released. In addition, EdSource, as a followup to its massive survey of middle schools, plans to look at much of the same data on algebra on larger scale. Its findings should be out this fall. And the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and Silicon Valley Community Foundation plan to take a harder look at the issue of math placements in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in coming months. Meanwhile, I encourage middle and high school math teachers to share their thoughts.)
Maybe this is similar to when both sides complain that a news story is biased — it means it was just right…?
“The researchers speculated that some middle school teachers were too conservative in their recommendations, passing along only their best students for geometry; some have been castigated by high school teachers for recommending too many.”
My kids’ school district, San Francisco Unified, gives a 9th-grade math placement test. Doesn’t that seem like the most fair and reasonable way?
By the way, I propose that all journalists who write about this take that 9th-grade math placement test. It really should be basic, a Journalism 1A minimum standard, before they start tossing about judgments one way or another.
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Back in the stone age (67-68) we didn’t even have Algebra I in the 8th Grade. In high school (freshman year) we had Algebra I and I failed miserably at it with D-minuses and F’s through the whole year ending with a D minus. In Sophmore year, I was relegated to General Math classes throughout the rest of my high school experience. I wish they’d had such a thing as a Math Placement Test so I wouldn’t have had a horrible experience in Algebra. Even today when I recently picked up and looked at the latest Algebra I textbook, I’m still stumped. Not everyone’s smart enough for that, myself included.
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No explanation is provided above as to why students who did well in Algebra 1 in the 8th grade, as determined by their performance on a standardized test, would be required to repeat it in the 9th grade. It really does not make sense.
Regarding the statement about 1/2 of the students failing algebra, whether this takes place at the 8th or the 9th grade, an important element likely leading to this failure is the abstractness of the subject.
Students as early at the 3rd and 4th grade can begin to gain comfort working with algebraic equations such as 4x + 3 = 3x + 9 and with word problem, thus laying a foundation for later algebraic work, if these concepts are presented in a visual and hands-on approach. See the video clip on You Tube, Algebra the Fun and Easy Way.
Without such a solid foundation in basic algebra, even students who are good with arithmetic and in working with fractions can have a difficult time in Algebra 1.
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I am looking forward to seeing the whole study, as well as EdSource’s work on the middle school survey. But besides talking about placement – the who and when – we should also be talking about the “what”. Algebra is denuded of its elegance and yes, simplicity, by being distilled down to a set of “things” to “cover.” It is the new floor, not the ceiling, in order for students to to be as viable as possible – as college students or employees – once they venture out after their K12 edcuation. Therefore, it should be more about thinking and communicating with precision and less about factoids and formulas. (Not that knowing some formulas is not important, but they are not the end-all-be-all of algebraic thinking.) And what do we really mean by “did well in Algebra?” Did all the homeowrk? Passed some tests? Scored above some cut-point on a single test? Had success in later mathematics courses? We are in dire straits in terms of growing our own scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. One piece of evidence that this is recognized as a national issue is the legislation for grants focusing on STEM curricula and training. Algebra is part of a continuum, not a stand-alone course to get through. Perhaps if we repackage mathematics and throw out the word “algebra,” we can overcome the automatic sense of distaste that comes into the heads of so many people (of all ages) when the word is mentioned! As a final comment, I have a new respect for bloggers and comment posters regarding how they boil down huge ideas to a few key sentences. I surely have failed, but I hope some of my thoughts came through!
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All of the comments so far are about the findings, but this has been known a long time. What is important is to do something about it. Join the math councils that are part of the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success where math teachers at all levels get the data, find out what happens to their students at the next level and then work together to make improvements. And the results show. http://www.calpass.org Alice R.
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As a math teacher of ninth graders in California (Algebra 1), I see too many kids who claim they have taken Algebra 1 in 8th grade, but it does not mean the course called “Algebra” at their former middle schools adhered to all the Algebra 1 standards as mandated by California. Thus, even after retaking Algebra 1 in High School, many fail because they either never learned the material as they claim (or as their former schools claim) —or they do not possess the necessary study habits or skills to pass a course as demanding as Algebra 1.
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Thank you for responding, M.E. One of the findings in the study that I didn’t mention was that middle schools offer a confusing array of courses whose titles that don’t give parents any indication of the rigor of the algebra content.
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I’m an Asian 8th grader in NY and I’m being forced to take Algebra 1 again because the Algebra credit I got in VA doesn’t count here. I took Algebra 1 in 7th grade, and YES it covered all the current standards and we even took the state test, that clearly said, “Algebra 1 SOL” and for your information, I got a perfect score. Here in NY I’m always bored in math class because all of it is review, and this time around I’m doing worst, because I’m always bored and don’t see the point of taking this course all over again. After looking over both standards I saw that there will only be two times that my class will cover something that were not included in the VA standards in the time I was taking Algebra 1. (But we did cover both of those topics briefly) I find this very frustrating and hope that something could be done.
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Well Idont really know what to do on my project so help pleasseee
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I came across this old post in a search.
I know David Foster, so when he cautions that we math teachers try inappropriately to separate the wheat from the chaff, I am willing to listen.
Still, I think that there are different grades of chaff. The chaff that I would feel justified in separating are people who are bad students in general. Most of the students who fail my math classes are failing other classes too, and have been failing for several years.
I said “would feel justified in separating” a moment ago because the system no longer attempts to separate such students. They take the same “college preparatory” classes (the only classes offered), enjoy social promotion, and sometimes manage to get into second-tier CSU or UC schools, where they will take remedial courses.
Everyone would be better off if we stopped trying to force a high-academic program on such students. They would emerge happier and wealthier if they were free to select high school courses that (a) interested them, (b) prepared them for specific careers or trades, and (c) were taught in a practical/applied rather than abstract manner.
Very few students benefit from a high school math program focused on algebra, or from a high school English program focused on literary analysis, to pick two examples from California’s standards.
It was always so. All that has changed is that we no longer offer viable placements for non-academic students. Whither the all-American “composite high school”, with its variety of subjects and tracks.
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