Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Effects of almost universal 8th grade algebra

http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/education_seminar_series/algebrapaper-011212.pdf
The Aftermath of Accelerating Algebra: Evidence from a District
Policy Initiative
by Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor - #18161 (ED)

Abstract:

In 2002/03, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina
initiated a broad program of accelerating entry into algebra
coursework. The proportion of moderately-performing students taking
algebra in 8th grade increased from half to 85%, then reverted to
baseline levels, in the span of just five years. We use this
policy-induced variation to infer the impact of accelerated entry
into algebra on student performance in math courses as students
progress through high school. Students affected by the acceleration
initiative scored significantly lower on end-of-course tests in
Algebra I, and were either significantly less likely or no more
likely to pass standard follow-up courses, Geometry and Algebra II,
on a college-preparatory timetable. Although we also find that the
district assigned teachers with weaker qualifications to Algebra I
classes in the first year of the acceleration, this reduction in
teacher quality accounts for only a small portion of the overall
effect.

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From the paper:

'Our results indicate that Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s acceleration
initiative worsened the Algebra I test scores of affected students and
reduced their likelihood of progressing through a college-preparatory
curriculum. Moderately-performing students who were accelerated into
Algebra I in 8th grade scored one-third of a standard deviation worse
on the state end-of-course exam, were 18 percentage points less likely
to pass Geometry by the end of 11th grade, and were 11 percentage
points less likely to pass Algebra II by the end of 12th grade,
compared to otherwise similar students in birth cohorts that were not
subjected to the policy. Lower-achieving students who were accelerated
into taking the course in 9th grade also exhibited significant
declines in all outcomes considered. By contrast, higher-performing
students who were accelerated into Algebra I in 7th grade, despite
receiving lower test scores on the Algebra I test, showed no ill
effects on subsequent course completion.'

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There is a tendency for policymakers to notice that people who do X (go to college, take AP classes, take algebra in 8th grade) have better outcomes and to then push everyone to do X. This is unfounded, because different people are suited to different educational paths, depending on their IQs, their personalities, and other factors.

I'd agree, except that these students probably didn't have optimal math instruction leading up to the acceleration either. The other factors have to include the environment, and in this case it seems that the poor area schools may be limiting many students. But even in general, the idea that simply accelerating average students will improve performance is ridiculous!

A quick search for previous work of the authors turns up some interesting results, including these findings from a quick skim of two papers of theirs:

Classroom segregation increased in North Carolina from 2000/01 through 2005/06, continuing a general previous trend, and increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg ("School Segregation under Color-blind Jurisprudence: The Case of North Carolina", Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2008). In addition, teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among North Carolina schools to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families in areas including Charlotte-Mecklenburg ("Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based
Policies to Level the Playing Field", Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2010).

These authors seem to be chronicling long-standing problems in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area and elsewhere in NC, which especially afflict lower-income students, which in the case of Charlotte-Mecklenburg probably form a large part of the students who underperformed as a result of the acceleration plan. In context, I'm guessing that the algebra acceleration was attempted as a quick patch for educational problems that probably begin in kindergarten for these underserved children.

This sort of thing happens because social scientists love causation fallacies. The cause of collegiate success isn't being in 8th grade algebra, it's whatever set of circumstances set a child up to be taking 8th grade algebra. What they thought was the end of the research was really just the beginning.

Also from the article:
This is all very strange to me. A recent thread discussing early admission into AP courses has messages about school policies barring entry into AP courses before a certain grade (e.g. Kai's message on June18 at 6:32 pm). Why is algebra so magically special that it's okay to push every kid into it before most of them are ready, but we risk ending civilization as we know it ( ) if we let a HG+ kid take an AP course in 10th grade?

ETA: MoN, that's painful.

There is a way to determine if someone is ready for Algebra.

Throwing a bunch of classes at kids without understanding if they are ready is "cargo cult" education.

There are real opportunity costs in education. Spending time in a class that the child is not ready for takes away from a class that they CAN do which can then allow them to progress.

This study just highlights the opportunity costs.

I agree with Bostonian and Iucounu; causation fallacy produced by misinterpretation of a correlation.

We've seen this locally in terms of pressure to place high school students of moderate ability into AP coursework, too.

MOST kids just aren't prepared/able/ready for 'advanced' material. Duh. That's what makes it "advanced" material; if it were suitable for the middle of the distribution, it would be the standard already, no?

Placing all (well, all average and up) learners into advanced coursework is just asinine and, I'd argue, somewhat cruel. That's no different than expecting a profoundly intellectually disabled child to do standard curriculum at standard pacing in order to "keep up with peers" in a regular classroom. Cruel. Because some kids realy cannot manage it, and it just sets them up for failure. Unfairly so, really.

We see this quite a bit in our local district-- it's a regular pressure cooker because of parent demands and expectations. Our district touts that 25-30% of their students are "GT" according to the state's definition of the term. So most kids take one or more AP courses in 11th or 12th grade. Of course, that also means that even capable 9th-10th graders have no room to get into those classes.

More ominously, it means that the suicide rate and mental health disorders among the high schoolers here are frighteningly high. (We have two high-tech employers, a major regional medical center, and a land-sea-space grant university in a town of 55K residents. So yeah-- not hard to do the math and figure out how many terminally-degreed households that adds up to be.)

Not offering any of those opportunities at all limits the potential achievement of those (unusual) students who are ready, eager and able, but pushing ill-prepared students into them is no better.

Reality is a pretty harsh taskmaster, unfortunately-- what the 'haves' (in an educational sense) possess that the have-nots do not, is, in spite of all efforts to ignore it, probably not something that can be "given" to a person via tangible means.

Opportunity costs indeed.

Same problem here in our school district (state). We also (our school district) aren't giving "the middle" enough opportunity to excel. We're all here as parents of exceptionally gifted kids and therefore see these problems in the light of our children's challenges, but fwiw, even though it's on a less radical level, kids of average intelligence and ability in many schools aren't getting the challenge they really can fly with.

polarbear

I most certainly agree with that sentiment in a more general sense. I see that, too, on a state-wide level. The local phenomenon is more of a Garrison Keillor effect-- everyone's child is "above average" here. Even if they aren't.

Now, there is probably some validity to the notion that our local mean skews a bit high relative to state and national averages. (Heck, the state that I'm in skews about five IQ points higher than the national average, and my county far higher than that... so a ballpark estimate is that 'average' IQ scores in the district might really be about 110-- but still...)

Anyway, point is that expecting more critical thinking of all learners is probably a good thing. But that means not spending all of the class time focused on moving the second-to-lowest quartile up into "meets standard" range on the almighty annual assessments. That is not going to happen anytime soon in the 'standard' classes, I fear.

Ergo the students with the best opportunities for meaningful learning in their individual proximal zones are, ironically, those in the lowest quartile in 'remedial' coursework, and those in the top quartile (less the ones like our own kids who are mostly in the top 1% or so) who are in 'accelerated/enriched' material. I agree with the notion that the enrichment available to those students could easily be beneficial to the students in the middle two quartiles as well. If only we (as a nation) weren't so fixated on standardized testing, that might actually become a reality; the evidence is quite clear that higher expectations and richer instruction benefit students of ALL abilities.

No wonder parents want their kids in enriched classrooms-- even if the only way to get them there is to coach them into "GT" status. Personally, I obviously don't favor that approach because it necessarily means diluting the level and pace of appropriate instruction for those GT classes, but I can certainly understand parental frustration with the "standard" (and AYP focussed) offerings.

What is unconscionable is that administrators and educators buy into this kind of fallacious thinking-- that by PLACING kids in those environments with higher-ability classmates, we'll automatically get higher performance from everyone. It's the wrong mechanistic explanation, basically, and it costs resources (and quality of education for all students) to get that equation wrong.

In short, while I stand by my belief that plenty of kids that do NOT belong there are being shuttled into GT and/or accelerated coursework (at least locally, but I suspect this is true on a national level too, given the relative popularity and resonance of pieces like "Race to Nowhere,"), it is simultaneously the case that the WAY in which children as a whole are being taught science and mathematics is deeply, maybe even profoundly flawed, and highly skewed toward 'basic proficiency' rather than a mastery model that seeks/expects excellence.

All kids deserve better.

The authors expanded their study to 10 school districts in North Carolina, and found that putting students in 8th grade algebra has "negative effects among students in the bottom 60% of the prior achievement distribution"

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W18649?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw
Algebra for 8th Graders: Evidence on its Effects from 10 North
Carolina Districts
by Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor - #18649 (ED PE)

Abstract:

This paper examines the effects of policies that increase the number
of students who take the first course in algebra in 8th grade, rather
than waiting until 9th grade. Extending previous research that
focused on the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system, we use data for
the 10 largest districts in North Carolina. We identify the effects
of accelerating the timetable for taking algebra by using data on
multiple cohorts grouped by decile of prior achievement and
exploiting the fact that policy-induced shifts in the timing of
algebra occur at different times in different districts to different
deciles of students. The expanded data make it possible to examine
heterogeneity across students in the effect of taking algebra early.
We find negative effects among students in the bottom 60% of the
prior achievement distribution. In addition, we find other sources
of heterogeneity in effects.

My son will take Algebra in 7th grade through our gifted program. I wonder what that means for this study.

I would think nothing in that the study seems to be indicating that kids who are average - below average in terms of achievement in math don't do well long term with taking Algebra I in 8th grade. I can't imagine that your ds is average or below in terms of math achievement if he is taking Algebra I in 7th.

My dd12 is also taking Algebra I in 7th this year and I'd say that probably 1/5 of her grade is doing the same, but her school is one of the highest achieving middle schools in our state so there are probably a good chunk of high achieving math kids.

What I'd be curious about is whether average or high average ability kids who are above average or well above average in math achievement do well long term with math acceleration along the lines of Algebra I in 7th or 8th. Where we're at, my guess would be that most kids who are average or above in math achievement take Algebra I in 8th.

The purpose of the above research paper is to find a fool-proved method in math education for majority kids without additional teacher training, without massive Singapore style math drills, and without any parent investment in after-school private tutoring. I bet these researchers would find improving math performance when they move algebra from 9th grade to 10th.

FWIW, algebra class would have much more impedimental stuffs. Some kids in DS' algebra I class used to get A or B in pre-algebra, but failed to understand concepts in graph, function, exponent, qudratic, etc. So the math teacher had to review it again and again and again.

Having taught in post-secondary when this spiraling notion was first implemented widely in primary and secondary (late 90s into early 2000's was the first crop of kids that went all the way through with this spiraling pedagogical strategy), I think that you may well have something there.

I truly believe that operant conditioning now trains students to Recall/Regurgitate/Purge/Rinse/Repeat. This was when students began to be indignant when anyone expected them to actually, you know... have retained anything from listed course prerequisites. Because naturally, if I were teaching an Avanced Instrumental Analysis course, I should be willing to remind students of the basics of algebra and chemical equilibrium, right? (Suuuuuuuuure...) How dare I expect that they remember any of that from Gen Chem or high school...

The larger problem, of course, is that when you spend 40% (not the previous 10%) of your time rehashing material that students (should have) seen previously... you have 30% LESS time to spend actually teaching course content which is new and challenging. Nice.

I loathe this with every fibre of my being. Truly-- and the ONE time that DD attempted the "well, it just isn't very important if I 'retain' the info, since... well, you KNOW that I'll see it again anyway, so why try harder..." I just about became unhinged.

That kind of lazy, apathetic mindset is totally incompatible with true learning.

I think this is the single biggest thing wrong with education now-- and that list isn't a short one, by any means, I'll be the first to admit. But the repetition and "oh, it's okay... you'll have another chance... and another... and another... and another..." attitude is just appalling beyond my ability to express it.

It makes educational attainment meaningless. Which is awful in and of itself for the impact that it has on an entire society/culture which no longer values excellence or sees it as a culmination rather than an "event", but it also then makes education as a whole stultifying for the few students who will not/cannot operate that way.

:grr:

Very grr. Credentialism over competence.

IMO, "education" in the United States is dominated by crass thinking and industrial metrics (i.e. scores on watered-down multiple choice tests and GPAs that are based on lots of rubrics that can be manipulated). Excellence, the creation of thoughtful citizens, and learning things well as a way of contributing to the previous two things aren't part of the picture. What's important is that the widgets be good enough to be passed on to the next level of manufacturing. If the end product falls apart, it doesn't matter, provided the score on final inspection/final multiple choice exam was a pass.

I worked at a community college for a while and do grant review. The reliance on multiple choice tests is depressing. What's worse is that people seem to accept them without question. There's no room for being thoughtful or for honestly applying knowledge when the question has to be answered in a minute or less.

And I think it leads to apathetic mindsets. If a mind isn't challenged in a meaningful way, it's no surprise that it works in the way it was trained: in the service of expediency.