San Francisco may reverse math policy designed to improve equity after research showed it didn't work
JOHN SEXTON 1:00 PM on May 10, 2023
San Francisco may reverse math policy designed to improve equity after research showed it didn't work
I’ve written about this topic several times but the story continues to plod along through the San Francisco bureaucracy. Back in 2014 the city adopted a new and supposedly more equitable approach to math. The problem was that minority students were lagging white (and Asian) students in math. Prior to 2014 students were sent on one of two tracks. And advanced math track had students taking Algebra I in 8th grade while a slower track had other students waiting until the freshman year of high school to take that class. It was a slight difference but it meant that some kids were getting to Calculus in their senior year, giving them a leg up when applying to college. That was deemed inequitable.
So the new curriculum put in place in 2014 ended tracking and required that all students wait until 9th grade to take Algebra I. The idea was that by keeping students together longer, usually through 10th grade, the lower performing students would do better on math proficiency tests. And San Francisco went even further by forcing students who took Algebra I in private courses prior to high school to repeat the course anyway unless they could pass a difficult test to get out of it.
But there’s been an increasing amount of evidence that this de-tracking plan for math didn’t work. A group of academics at Stanford looked at the results and found the achievement gaps didn’t change.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/05/10/san-francisco-may-reverse-math-policy-designed-to-improve-equity-after-research-showed-it-didnt-work-n549871
