Pushing for Success for All in Today’s Fraught Political Climate, Part I

Editor’s Note: Math Values is thrilled to introduce Kung’s Quarter, a new quarterly column by the inimitable Dave Kung. Previously the editor of Dana Center Connections on this blog, Dave’s long history with the MAA and impressive work with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin make him uniquely suited to write about policy and equity in mathematics education. We are kicking off Kung’s Quarter with a two-part post, the second half of which will run on Thursday, March 28.

Two uncomfortable truths face most of us in the math community. Students from certain groups, including Black and Latinx students, those experiencing poverty, and women and non-binary students, continue to struggle in our disciplines, in large part because of historical exclusion and ongoing marginalization. Nobody can look at these outcomes and claim that we are living up to our goals. At the same time, directly addressing such issues – or even talking publicly about them – is now more daunting in the face of heightened political tensions and recent changes in state laws.

It feels like a completely untenable situation – like one of the seemingly impossible puzzles we love to give students. Fortunately, like most of those puzzles, there is a way out of this conundrum.

Most efforts toward equity (no longer an employee of the state of Texas, I have regained my freedom to use this language) focus on one of two areas. Some concentrate on big-P policies that help targeted students gain access to educational systems, like the admissions policies now banned by the Supreme Court which have little impact outside of the schools with the highest rejection rates. Others focus on highly interpersonal work, like implicit bias training for teachers – which also have limited impacts. However, many of the most effective levers for equity remain squarely within our purview to enact.

To illustrate what we might do, I want to unpack one of the most effective equity changes I have seen, which comes – ironically – from Texas.

A decade ago, schools in Central Texas noted that their 8th grade Algebra classrooms didn’t look like their overall student populations. Getting to Algebra in 8th grade is an important benchmark – it sets up students to reach calculus by their senior year. Rather than throw their hands up and just blame the folks earlier in the pipeline, they did something quite brave, facilitated by the Charles A. Dana Center and the E3 Alliance. Local math leaders dove into the data that isolated their impact on students’ trajectories. Yes, some students weren’t prepared coming into middle school, but how about the ones who were?

When they isolated the students who were in the top quintile on the state’s 5th grade assessment, about 70% of them made it to 8th grade Algebra. For Latinx students that figure was only 46%; for Black students it was an appalling 33%. Oddly, Black students in the second quintile were more likely to be on the advanced track (53%) than those in the first quintile.

The percentage of Central Texas 5th graders in the 1st quintile who enrolled in 8th grade Algebra by race in 2014. (E3 Alliance)

When educators look at disaggregated data like these, too often they engage in problematic “gap gazing” - acknowledging the problem but not doing anything to solve it. These data isolated what was happening to the middle school years. They couldn’t just blame elementary schools. Instead, they admitted that they might have some culpability – and might be able to solve the problem.

And they did.

By 2019, over 80% of high-performing 5th graders went on to 8th grade Algebra, including white students (83%), Latinx students (80%) and Black students (82%). How did Central Texas accomplish this rare feat of racial equity? Hours of bias training for counselors? Including more Black names in word problems? Nope. They simply changed the choice architecture from opt in (high performing students could opt into 8th grade Algebra) to opt out. In the new system, the default path for students in the top two quintiles was to go into 8th grade Algebra, a decision that students and parents could opt out of if they desired.

The percentage of Central Texas 5th graders in the 1st quintile who enrolled in 8th grade Algebra by race in 2019. (E3 Alliance)

Did this fix everything? Nope. Differences in achievement in fifth grade weren’t fixed – but at least they weren’t exacerbated. The change in choice architecture had huge equity benefits. Now those gains are being extended state-wide thanks to HB214, passed by the same Texas politicians who outlawed many DEI efforts.

This is a story about the K12 mathematics education system – but it has important lessons for us at every part of that system. In part 2, we’ll dive into some of those implications. Stay tuned!

Dr. Dave Kung has worked in the intersection of mathematics and equity for three decades. He served as the Director of Policy at the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and as Director of MAA Project NExT. He also works closely with K-12 and higher ed organizations, especially concentrating on equity issues in mathematics. Kung was awarded the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award, the MAA’s highest award in college math teaching, for his work at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He resides there, working as a consultant for a variety of organizations, as well as playing violin and running–never simultaneously, but sometimes alongside his partner and daughter.