LA Times, NPR examine California proposal to demote algebra
Some educators question whether requiring algebra does more harm than good for many non-STEM majors.
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Is it true that what spreads nationwide often starts in California? If so, advocates of STEM education for all citizens, not just for future STEM workers, will want to consider the opening of a recent Los Angeles Times article :
The chancellor of the California Community Colleges system says intermediate algebra should no longer be required to earn an associate degree—unless students are in the fields of science, technology, engineering or math.
Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who heads the nation’s largest community college system of 114 campuses, told the Times that intermediate algebra is seen as a major barrier for students of color, preventing too many from completing degrees. About three-fourths of those who transfer to four-year universities are non-STEM majors, he said, who should be able to demonstrate quantitative reasoning skills by taking statistics or other math courses more applicable to their fields.
“College-level algebra is probably the greatest barrier for students—particularly first-generation students, students of color—obtaining a credential,” he said.
The Times reports that failure to complete intermediate algebra “has kept tens of thousands of California community college students in limbo each year.” In June, another Times article began by presenting the example of a mathematical “operation ” that students are expected to simplify. It stated the conundrum concretely:
How necessary is intermediate algebra, a high school-level course on factoring trinomials, graphing exponential functions and memorizing formulas that most non-math or science students will rarely use in everyday life or for the rest of college? A growing number of educators have challenged this long-held gold standard of math in California, particularly at a time when two-year colleges are under increasing pressure to improve completion rates. More than 3 out of 4 community college students in California cannot pass the placement exam and are forced to take one, two or more semesters of remedial math. Discouraged or frustrated, most drop out before ever earning a degree.
The June article reported that remedial help and tutoring have generally failed, and that alternatives to algebra—statistics, computer science, data analysis—"have been scrutinized for lacking rigor and assurance they’d be accepted at a four-year university.” The article cited algebra’s “foundational value”: By “learning the basic concepts of using variables to represent abstract quantities and understanding what happens when one side of an equal sign is manipulated, students are taught to think critically and more abstractly.” But it reported as well that the intermediate algebra requirement in question is “more technical and specific,” causing critics to dismiss the requirement as outmoded and obsolete, and to compare it to past policies elsewhere forcing students to study Latin.
Among the ensuing letters to the editor , one—from a math teacher—brought up the dismissive Latin comparison. Another charged that standards are being lowered and predicted that graduates would be less successful in “the real world.” Another reported, “While I would have been distressingly challenged to complete a course in intermediate algebra, I still somehow managed to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley and go on to earn masters and doctorate degrees in clinical psychology.”
The Times noted a newly released state report that had focused attention on the issue. One key to the news is probably an earlier report that contained this statement: “The emerging movement is toward differentiated ‘math pathways’ with distinct trajectories tied to students’ goals. Alternatives emphasizing statistics, modeling, computer science, and quantitative reasoning that are cropping up in high schools and colleges are beginning to challenge the dominance of the familiar math sequence.” The newspaper also reported on a fraud scandal caused when Los Angeles Trade-Technical College falsified grades to give credit for intermediate algebra.
Maybe National Public Radio (NPR) sees California as an originator of national trends. In any case, NPR has been paying attention to algebra for a long time. In 2014 and again in March 2016 , the network addressed the general question of algebra requirements’ usefulness. On 19 July, in a five-minute-long “All Things Considered” segment , NPR reported on California’s current controversy.
That piece made a point of recalling Bob Moses, the subject in 2013 of an eight-minute Morning Edition segment with the summarizing headline “To ’60s civil rights hero, math is kids’ formula for success.” At age 78, Moses—a janitor’s son and a Harvard graduate—had worked as a Mississippi civil rights activist a half-century earlier.
Two decades later, empowered by a MacArthur genius grant, he started something called the Algebra Project. NPR reported its goal: “Take students who score the worst on state math tests, double up on the subject for four years and get them ready to do college-level math by the end of high school.” A passage from NPR’s 2013 coverage crystallizes the civil rights dimension:
Moses says this newfound competence is more than just empowering. It’s how these kids can avoid being second-class citizens when they finish high school, destined for low-wage, low-skill work on the second tier of an Information Age economy.
“Education is still basically Jim Crow as far as the kids who are in the bottom economic strata of the country,” Moses says. “No one knows about them, no one cares about them.”
Some in the right-wing press have picked up on the civil rights aspect. A commentator at the American Spectator echoed one of the Times’ letters to the editor by declaring that “if academic credentials are emptied of anything with any rigor involved, that paper diploma may be worth even less than the paper it’s printed on to potential employers.” Often in similarly disapproving ways, the California controversy has been covered by the Washington Examiner , Fox News , the Blaze , World Net Daily , and the Daily Caller .
Will community colleges and other institutions nationwide now be demoting intermediate algebra? Is America about to embark on a serious civic discussion of the relation between algebra requirements and the soft bigotry of low expectations? Maybe what will actually be seen is apathy about the demotion. If California sets the agenda, it must be noted that searches for recent occurrences of the word algebra at the websites of other major California newspapers—the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News, and the San Francisco Chronicle—turn up almost nothing.
Steven T. Corneliussen is Physics Today‘s media analyst. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.