What Happened When A District Put Struggling Students in Regular Algebra?

When students take Algebra 1 matters.

If high schoolers don't pass the course by 9th grade, they're unlikely to reach college-preparatory math in high school. There are too many courses to get through in four years. As a result, struggling students face two potential pitfalls: being pushed into algebra courses that they're not ready to tackle, or shunted onto a lower-level track that makes it unlikely they'll ever catch up to their peers.

But a new study shows that some students who would have otherwise been placed in remedial math can succeed in 9th grade algebra—if they have the right support structure.

The research, published in a working paper from Stanford University professor Thomas Dee and postdoctoral research fellow Elizabeth Huffaker, examined a de-tracking initiative in one California district that placed below-grade-level and on-grade-level students together in the same 9th grade algebra classes and gave their teachers intensive training on how to support students at different ability levels.

They found that struggling students in these mixed classes went on to pass more high school math courses. And they did better on 11th grade math tests than their peers who had been placed into a remedial track—without affecting the achievement of the on-level students in the class.

The findings demonstrate the importance of "attending to the instructional core," said Dee, referencing the professional development that teachers received on how to reach all students.

While praising the study's outcomes, other researchers noted that it paints a complicated picture of improvement.

"Everybody really wants there to be a path for kids to not get stuck in remedial 9th grade math, and to take Algebra 1 and succeed," said Heather Hill, a professor of teacher learning and practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who studies professional learning in math.

The school district pulled many different levers. It provided professional learning, but also encouraged teachers to use a new curriculum, and worked with teachers who volunteered specifically for this special class.

"Professional learning could well have been the glue that held this all together, but there were a lot of different components," she said.

And while more students who started off below grade level made it to higher-level math, many of them struggled and had to repeat Algebra 1—an outcome that might not be "politically palatable" for districts, Hill said.

Algebra intervention provided teachers with support for differentiation

When students should take Algebra 1 has long been a contentious question.

In the 1990s and 2000s, several states and large school systems began requiring students to take the subject in 8th or 9th grade, with the aim of ensuring that all students would be ready for college-level math upon graduation. But these policies often didn't raise student achievement , and in some cases, lowered it .

"Negative effects were really concentrated on students who weren't as developmentally prepared to take Algebra 1 early," said Huffaker. "There is a major academic challenge to those students who are being put in more rigorous courses, and there is a pedagogical challenge to teachers."

The intervention in this study aimed to lessen that challenge.

To test it, researchers randomly assigned incoming 9th graders in the district, Sequoia Union in Redwood City, Calif., to one of two groups.

One was business as usual—students with below-grade-level proficiency in math were placed in remedial pre-Algebra, while on-grade-level students were put into Algebra 1. Historically, this plan resulted in racially imbalanced classes in the district, with Black and Latino students more likely than their white and Asian peers to be placed in remedial classes.

Students in the other group all took algebra together, regardless of their past performance.

Finally, one group of students wasn't a part of the experiment: those who had already taken Algebra 1 in middle school, comprising about a third of the district. These students continued on to the next course in the high school sequence.

Teachers who taught these heterogeneous algebra courses received a suite of supports designed to help them reach learners at different levels: 15 days of professional development, an additional planning period, access to a district-wide professional learning community, coaches that visited four times a semester, and a partner teacher at their school site.

In part, thes professional development focused on employing "math language routines" designed to give teachers a way to check for students' understanding in real time, and address any misunderstandings if necessary.

In one of these routines, for example, two students work together to solve a math problem. One has a card with the problem, but with crucial details left out. The other student has another card with these relevant details. Teachers can evaluate how well students understand the underlying concepts involved by hearing what questions they ask of each other in their attempts to piece together an answer.

Could other districts replicate these results?

The de-tracked algebra class resulted in some positive outcomes for students who started 9th grade with below-grade-level performance in math.

On average, these students were more likely to pass Algebra 2 by the end of high school than their peers who had been placed in a 9th grade remedial course. They also outperformed the remedial group on 11th grade state tests. And these students were more engaged in school—they attended school more often, and they were more likely to stay in the district than their peers.

But placement into algebra came at a cost for some of this group.

About half of the students sorted into the de-tracked class had to retake the class, or enroll in a special pre-geometry bridge class as sophomores. After this setback, they were then on the same track as their peers in remedial courses.

It's also hard to know how an initiative like this one would scale in another district, said Hill.

The researchers credit students' success to the teachers' professional learning, but the initiative changed many factors at once, she said. Students were exposed to more algebra content, their teachers were encouraged to use specific curriculum materials, and they were in classes with higher-achieving peers, all of which could have played a part in the results.

Then, there's the influence of teacher interest.

Most of the teachers in the de-tracked classrooms volunteered for the job—they weren't randomly assigned. The researchers conducted statistical tests to ensure that there wasn't anything special, or especially effective, about these teachers that drove the results.

Still, the volunteer model used in this study means that results might look different if the same program were implemented in a district where teachers were required to participate, said Hill.

It's important to be "clear-eyed" about how this kind of intervention might play out in different contexts, said Dee. Still, he sees the research as a "compelling proof point."

"You're taking some of the most educationally vulnerable kids, accelerating them into a canonically difficult class, and they're achieving more—not less."