When Pierre Holmes entered ninth grade, the school placed him in 9C, a lower-level algebra class.
Before that, Holmes had always gotten good grades in math (usually A's), and when he found out that his friends were math honors students, he felt like he belonged there too. So he approached his guidance counselor and asked why he wasn't participating in his honors math class. “Oh, would you like to give it a try?” Holmes recalls his advisor responding. He was transferred to advanced classes teaching Algebra II and Geometry.
Holmes was “tracked” or grouped into a low-performing math class. “Honestly, I never even thought about tracking. I was just a kid. I will go to whatever class they send me to.” Holmes added: “If you don’t pay attention, no one will tell you.”
Looking back on his recent experience as a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, a public policy research organization, Holmes doesn't think it makes much sense that he should have looked for opportunities to try harder math. Only when it was too late to influence his own decisions did it become clear to him that this was a moment when he could be unwittingly sent down a different path.
A new study suggests that students' willingness to try intellectually stimulating courses like calculus may depend in part on where they attend high school rather than their aptitude for math. Because these courses can determine admission to coveted universities, they can exclude talent and reinforce unequal opportunities.
Previous research has shown that students receive a variety of guidance from counselors, and some students even turn to social media sites like YouTube to decide which math courses to take. If America's math scores fall behind, there can be big consequences.
The Complex Realities of Tracking
Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND, says eliminating tracking is not the answer. But her questions, she argues, are how students who can handle difficult math content can achieve equitably so that their talents aren't wasted.
Her research shows that the factors used to determine how to group students vary by state and type of school.
Kaufman and Holmes published a report in February showing that large, low-poverty middle schools tend to use more achievement-based tracking for math placement than high-poverty middle schools. The report, called “Elementary and Middle School Opportunity Structures That Affect Students’ Learning in Mathematics,” examined student tracking, teacher qualifications and supports for struggling students in four states: California, Florida, New York and Texas. This was the first publication based on RAND's American Mathematics Educator Study. This particular report focused on a subset of data from that study drawn from 2,505 teachers and 2,293 principals working in kindergarten through eighth grade.
One finding: How these schools gathered students into math groups also varied depending on the income levels of the families they served. Schools with fewer students receiving free or reduced-price meals were more likely to use parent or family requests rather than teacher recommendations or performance of assessments when grouping students. Kaufman says it's not clear exactly why. Perhaps low-income families are less proactive or principals don't value their needs as highly, she speculates.
Schools typically use different types of data when assigning kids to tracks, Kaufman said. For example, in New York, it was common for principals to report using teacher recommendations when deciding where to place students. In Florida, on the other hand, it was more common to rely on grade-level tests or midterm assessments rather than teacher recommendations when grouping students.
Some of the differences in the reports are mysterious. For example, the survey found that principals in Texas reported more “key barriers” to providing effective K-12 math instruction. Not only did these principals put more pressure on teachers to cover specific materials that would be tested in Texas, they also revealed that teachers in Texas as a whole were understaffed and had less time to prepare for their classes. As for why this should be worse for Texas educators, as the data shows, researchers say there is no clear explanation.
access to opportunities
In Kaufman's previous work teaching adults seeking to earn their GED, she spent a lot of time reflecting on how the education system had “shortchanged” these students. Factors beyond their control seemed to be pulling them down the path to the GED. That is, where they were born, what opportunities they had, and what the school they attended when they were struggling could offer them.
When it comes to preparing students for success, she says, it's not just about what one teacher does in one classroom, but also what schools can do more broadly. That's what she sees in her math tracking too.
For example, many principals say their schools offer algebra, a critical juncture in the race to calculus. But Kaufman says only some students can take algebra, which means some tracking.
Ultimately, this can push students into an academic journey they may not even be aware they are on.
Students are often put on a career path and don't realize they have a choice in the matter, Kaufman says. Then I think it will be okay. But sometimes, she adds, students can get stuck on a lower path, especially when children are tracked between lower and higher achievement levels. This can shape a student's self-perception and even affect how teachers perceive a student's math abilities, she says, Kaufman.
Missing parts of math can make college more difficult, and this can happen without anyone discussing it with the student or their parents, she adds.