Schools are less likely to offer Latino and Black students early algebra classes, effectively shutting these students off from advanced courses and higher-paying jobs, according to research released Tuesday.
Algebra has traditionally been offered to teens starting in ninth grade, but a growing body of research shows that students who take the class in eighth grade are more likely to succeed in high school math, pursue STEM majors in college and earn more money as adults.
Nationwide, 3 in 5 schools offer students the option to take early algebra, according to research from NWEA, a national testing group. Schools in rural areas, high-poverty schools and campuses with a large Black or Latino student body were less likely to offer the class.
“Algebra in eighth grade is not just another math class,” said Daniel Long, one of the report’s researchers. “This is closing off access to advanced math pathways for many students.”
Even if a school does offer algebra to eighth graders, access is often determined by a child’s race or ethnicity, Long added. More than half of Asian eighth graders took the course when their school offered it, compared with 22 percent of Latino teens and 17 percent of Black students, data show.
Those gaps, Long said, persisted even among top-achieving students. About 60 percent of high-performing Black students are placed into algebra in eighth grade, compared with 84 percent of Asian teens and 68 percent of White and Latino students.
“Placement, not ability, seems to be the driver,” Long said. Researchers examined 162,000 children in 22 states.
Most schools use test scores, teacher recommendations and parent requests to determine who gets to take eighth-grade algebra. But those methods can be biased, said Allison Socol, vice president of P-12 policy, practice and research at EdTrust, a national education nonprofit that has also found disparities in who gets to take challenging classes.
“Because of implicit biases, racial biases, and mindsets about who is and who isn’t a math person, Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds — even when they demonstrate that they are ready and they are very clear that they are eager for those courses — are still shut out,” Socol said. “Across the U.S., in every state, students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are often shut out of rigorous courses.”
Teachers tend to underestimate children of color, even when they perform similarly to White students, a New York University researcher found. Wealthier parents tend to advocate more than less affluent families, according to research from Rand.
The effects can be seen within a few years. Students who take early algebra have more time in high school to take harder math classes, including calculus — a course that universities often use as a proxy for college readiness, Socol said.
“When we look at the kinds of careers that will be growing in those students’ future and the kind of skills that we need, there is a huge need for us to be communicating to all students, but in particular students who’ve been shut out in the past … that anyone can be a math student,” she said.
Long said schools can bypass these biases by embracing universal screening and automatically placing high-achieving students in rigorous classes. It’s an approach that has shown promise in some states including Colorado, Texas, North Carolina and Nevada, researchers noted.
In Central Texas, automatic enrollment policies increased the share of high-achieving Black students in eighth-grade algebra from 40 percent to 70 percent between 2014 and 2021. Meanwhile, Latino enrollment jumped from 50 percent to 70 percent. In 2023, the state passed a law requiring schools to give top-performing fifth graders more advanced math classwork.
North Carolina adopted a similar law and saw the share of top-performing Black students enrolled in advanced math grow from 88 percent to 92 percent after a single school year.
Now, about a third of eighth graders are taking algebra, said Sneha Shah-Coltrane, the state’s senior director of advanced learning and gifted education.
“That really has helped with the excellence gaps more than anything else,” Shah-Coltrane said. In some parts of the state, particularly in sparsely populated rural areas, districts have offered online classes or sent middle schoolers to the local high school for math class.
“We don’t want place to limit placement,” she said. “We’ve been able to catch the potential of students, and see the potential in students, in a way that we have not been able to see before.”
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