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A student practices graphing in Algebra I at Rudsdale Newcomer High School in Oakland.

Anne Wernikoff for EdSource

Enrolling students in high school math courses is a high-stakes endeavor with an outsize effect on students’ college opportunities and even on their entire careers.

The pressure to reach Calculus by a student’s senior year of high school often translates into pressure to take Algebra I, the first course in a five-course sequence, by eighth grade. Algebra I (or Integrated Math I) is considered a ninth grade course, but taking it on that schedule typically doesn’t allow students to meet the prerequisites for Calculus in their remaining three years of high school. This is important when we consider that advanced math classes on a student’s transcript can boost their chances of admission to certain colleges.

But the benefits of eighth-grade math acceleration are neutralized when students who perform well in Algebra I are nevertheless required to repeat that course in ninth grade.

Students of color and low-income students face that predicament disproportionately under their schools’ placement practices. This glaring inequity was highlighted more than a decade ago by civil rights advocates in California — and confirmed in multiple research studies since then, including this one by our organizations last year.

Legislation targeting this unfair practice was passed in 2015. It requires the use of multiple objective measures to place students. “Successful pupils are achieving a grade of ‘B’ or better, or are testing at proficient or even advanced proficiency on state assessments. Nevertheless, they are held back to repeat 8th-grade mathematics coursework rather than advancing to the next course in the recommended mathematics course sequence,” the legislation noted.

But nine years since the bill’s passage, we still lack a clear picture of its impact — if any — on equitable ninth-grade math placement. In the meantime, numerous states have adopted policies that have demonstrated preliminary success in expanding access to acceleration opportunities in middle and/or high school.

California cannot afford to leave this equity issue to chance — especially because what we know to date about the implementation of California’s policy is not encouraging.

The law, the California Math Placement Act of 2015, requires a “fair, objective, and transparent” math placement policy using multiple objective measures of student performance to determine placement. It discourages the use of subjective measures such as teacher recommendations, because of the risk of bias. In particular, it says that teacher recommendations may be used only to advance students, not to hold them back.

But, according to a recent report from Rand Corp., high schools in California are more likely than schools elsewhere to use teacher recommendations to inform how students are placed into math classes.

In fact, data from the survey of high school principals analyzed in the report suggest that 95% of California high schools that track students into different math courses use teacher recommendations as part of their placement process. That’s more than the national average of 86% and far more than other large states such as Florida (56%), New York (78%) and Texas (70%).

In what appears to be a violation of the law, almost a third (31%) of California schools — more than twice the national average of 14% — use recommendation data exclusively.

Put another way, only 69% of California principals report using some form of assessment data — whether grade-level tests, diagnostic tests, in-class tests, or classroom assignments — to inform placement decisions. Nationally, the proportion was 85%, the researchers found.

Without further research, we won’t know why these teacher recommendation practices prevail. More importantly, we won’t know whether the past decade has brought any improvement in access to accelerated course sequences for students of color and low-income students. The available research on 12th grade course-taking before the Covid-19 pandemic shows continued inequities in access to advanced math for students who are Black, Latino, socioeconomically disadvantaged or English learners.

The issue of teacher recommendations is a nuanced one, as researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) pointed out in 2016. If bias is addressed, teacher input can have benefits — by accounting for factors such as students’ motivation and persistence, which metrics such as test scores may obscure. But no research suggests they should be used to the exclusion of objective measures.

The provision that teacher recommendations can be used only to advance students creates opportunities for students who perform better in class than on standardized assessments. PPIC noted that schools need better guidelines to comply with that provision. Many schools using recommendations may be doing so appropriately. But without further research, it’s hard to imagine how the 31% of schools that are relying solely on teacher recommendations and no assessment data could be doing what the law envisioned.

That is why we need clear measures of how students are being placed into math classes across the state.

While California has been in the dark about students’ math enrollment patterns, numerous other states have adopted automatic enrollment policies. Under such policies, students who meet a certain benchmark in math are automatically enrolled in an advanced math course the following year. Such enrollment policies have shown promise to address the very problem California lawmakers set out to fix nearly a decade ago.

• Beginning in 2014, districts in Washington state widened access to more rigorous math for Black and Latino students, whose enrollment in accelerated sequences increased by 3.1 percent more than their peers. As a result, Washington mandated automatic enrollment across the state in 2019.

• North Carolina adopted similar legislation in 2018, guaranteeing accelerated math opportunities for students who score at the highest level on an end-of-grade test.

• Schools in Dallas have also demonstrated success with this approach. From 2019-20 to 2022-23, the proportion of Black and Latino students who met fifth-grade standards and subsequently enrolled in sixth-grade honors math increased from 58% to 92% and 69% to 94%, respectively. These results led Texas to adopt its own statewide automatic enrollment policy last year.

Given the major role math placement exerts on students’ future opportunities, California leaders similarly should insist on rigorously measuring access to advanced math courses to ensure that it is equitable regardless of race or socioeconomic background.

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Pamela Burdman is executive director at Just Equations, a policy institute that reconceptualizes the role of math in education equity.

Rachel Ruffalo is senior director of strategic advocacy at EdTrust-West, an evidence-driven advocacy organization committed to advancing policies and practices to dismantle racial and economic barriers in California’s education system.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.