This article touches on a lot of the problems our school system has:
“Simply sticking students in courses without preparing them ahead of time for the class does not seem to work as an intervention,” said Chrys Dougherty, the author of the Arkansas and Texas analysis, published last month by the National Center for Educational Achievement, in Austin, which is owned by the test publisher ACT Inc. “It seems to work with adequately prepared students, but not for the most challenged students.”
I'm amazed that anyone even needed to do a study to figure that out. How could anyone possibly think that disadvantaged students would succeed in a class that was years beyond their current skill levels (
seven years according to another study cited in this article)? This approach just makes these kids even MORE disadvantaged. I'd skip class, too, if it was that far over my head.
His findings are in keeping with a larger body of studies from the 1990s and early 2000s that suggested algebra was, for many students, the primary gateway to advanced-level mathematics and college. The problem was that too many students—particularly those who were poor or members of disadvantaged minority groups—were turned away at the gate, screened out by ability-grouping practices at their schools.
This guy makes it sound like the evil schools were deliberately excluding students based on either their family income or their races/ethnic groups as a way of slamming the gates of education squarely in their faces.
Sorry, but this is wishful thinking. I'm not trying to deny that prejudicial attitudes and actions exist in this country, but in this case, I have to doubt that there was a systematic and successful large-scale movement to exclude low SES and minority students from algebra as recently as the 2000s.
“And there’s no simple solution to this problem,” he added, “because we also know that when tracking is eliminated, students at high levels don’t gain as much as they do in high-level or [Advanced Placement] classes.”
He's admitting that placing too many unqualified students into classes that they're not ready for ends up watering down the class and diluting the learning for the kids who belong there --- while still not giving skills to the unqualified kids. Again, forcing disadvantaged students into classes they aren't ready for just makes them MORE disadvantaged by making it even harder for them to catch up.
ETA: I agree with 22B. A LOT of this stuff, including algebra-for-all, is about politics and not about what's best for the students.
