Algebra gap remains for low-income and minority students in the Kansas City area

As a simple equation, the opportunity in Kansas City area schools to take early algebra’s springboard to higher math and college success remains unbalanced and unfair.

Five years after The Star first dissected state testing numbers, a new look has found that too many low-income students and minority students are still being left out.

Overall, more area students in 2015 took Algebra I in the eighth grade — ahead of high school — seizing what experts say is a powerful head start to lucrative and plentiful careers in technology and math.

But the participation gap has widened significantly since 2010 for low-income students and persisted essentially unchanged for minority students.

There are exceptions. The Grandview School District has joined the Center School District in accelerating all students into Algebra I by the eighth grade, even though the majority of their students are minority and most qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Most districts, however, choose to divide students between a regular eighth-grade math course and Algebra I.

“We were deciding at age 10 or 11, saying: ‘You’re going to be on this track, and you’re going to be on this track,’” Mary Anne Burton, a math teacher at Grandview’s Martin City Middle School, said of the time before the district went all-in on Algebra I.

“As a teacher, I didn’t want to be identifying kids and giving them the feeling they don’t have the ability to do this.”

Missouri’s arrangement of state tests creates a way to measure in most middle schools the demographic characteristics of those taking the different courses.

Most eighth-graders take grade-level math tests that districts must provide in grades three through eight.

Missouri students who take Algebra I take a state end-of-course exam intended to measure the math performance of high schools. Traditionally, students have taken Algebra I in the ninth grade, but eighth-graders who take the course take the exam as well. Who’s more likely to take which test?

In 2010, The Star found that minority students represented 30.6 percent of the students taking the regular eighth-grade math exam, but only 18.7 percent of the students taking the Algebra I exam — a gap of 11.9 percentage points.

The number of minority students overall has grown in the past five years, and in 2015 they represented 33.6 percent of the students taking regular eighth-grade math and 22.3 percent in algebra, narrowing the gap only slightly to 11.3 points.

The trend turned worse when low-income status was considered.

Students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunches represented 50.7 percent of regular eighth-grade math students and 33.9 percent of Algebra I students in 2010.

Five years later, low-income students made up 57.9 percent of the regular math students and only 30.7 percent of those in Algebra I.

The gap widened from 16.8 to 27.2 points.

The districts pushing for universal early algebra are trying to overcome what is a national concern.

Black and Latino students in national sampling by the U.S. Department of Education represented 38 percent of all students enrolled in seventh or eighth grade, but only 29 percent of the students passing Algebra I.

The same data in 2009 showed that in Kansas districts in the Kansas City area, black and Latino students made up 28.4 percent of total enrollment, but only 10.3 percent of the students enrolled in algebra in the seventh or eighth grade.

Nationally, black and Latino high school students represent 37 percent of total enrollment, but 20 percent of those enrolled in calculus.

Numerous studies link math success to college success and higher earnings.

At Martin City Middle School, 13-year-old Tehya Frederick knows that the road to college success is getting “harder and harder.”

She’s glad the school has accelerated her into Algebra I: “I want to be a lawyer.”

Eighth-grade teacher Ritchey Lowe’s class kicked into gear last week.

They were solving inequalities — 2(x-3) = 4x-6 — with compound variable equations waiting just ahead. Solving for x and y.

“It’s not as hard as it seems,” 13-year-old Jasia Williams said.

The pre-algebra skills she needed had been backloaded into seventh grade, and Jasia could tell.

“This makes me feel like I can succeed,” she said.

Making the shift to all Algebra I is not easy and requires intense collaboration across the grades to restructure curriculum and strategies all the way down to lower elementary grades.

The Center School District in south Kansas City had made its move to all Algebra I in the late 2000s, and Grandview was ready to follow suit in 2011 — with one last hesitation.

Martin City had one small classroom’s worth of eighth-graders who weren’t ready, the school thought, so it separated them. The experience accentuated all the discomfort the teachers had felt about dividing students.

“They knew they were not the select ‘chosen ones,’” Lowe said. She knows now, she said, “that there were quite a few of them who could do it, and we weren’t reaching their potential.”

Any moves toward universal middle school Algebra I come with serious warnings, however, said Diane Briars, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

The enhanced opportunities for students are real, she said, but only if they get to algebra with a solid skill set of kindergarten-to-eighth-grade math. That means not just the mechanics but conceptual understanding.

“The question isn’t ‘Should all students be taking Algebra I in eighth grade?’” Briars said. “The question is ‘Do they have adequate time and opportunity to learn the K-8 content?’ If you are skipping and creating holes, then there will be problems. Some students will stop taking mathematics.”

The state does not dictate or even recommend how districts handle a complicated choice in math courses.

“You want developmentally appropriate offerings in math for wherever your students are,” said Chris Neale, Missouri’s assistant education commissioner for quality schools.

“We let them make the decisions that are appropriate for the children they have.”

A look at 16 area Missouri districts showed the number of eighth-graders in Algebra I grew by nearly 1,000 students since 2010, close to 50 percent, but remained less than a third of the number of students taking regular eighth-grade math.

Not everyone can get to the point of passing the Algebra I exam in eighth grade. Grandview educators acknowledge that.

And many students move into the district during the school year who haven’t yet had pre-algebra preparation.

But many of those students will make it, including some who wouldn’t have been given the chance, Lowe said. The school provides extra instruction after school and at other opportunities to help them catch up.

Those who don’t pass will be in a much stronger position to succeed in algebra in the ninth grade, when the stakes rise for students in pursuit of a college-ready transcript.

“We’ve decided this is what’s in the best interest of kids,” said Kenny Rodriquez, Grandview’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “But it is hard on adults.”

Districts such as Center and Grandview that are pushing students sooner get an extra dose of the pain that all districts are feeling as they ratchet up to the higher standards now in place in Missouri and nationwide.

Some skills and concepts that had been taught in Algebra II are now expected in Algebra I, said Sally Newell, Center’s director of curriculum and instruction.

The pressure weighs throughout the K-8 system, making some wonder if the district should sustain its commitment to all Algebra I in middle school.

Center is pressing on, she said, increasing the pace, increasing the rigor — ensuring equal opportunity.

“We couldn’t back up the truck,” she said. “We made the risky move.”

More are taking Algebra I

Most districts have increased the number of eighth-graders taking Algebra I.

Note: Chart excludes districts whose eighth- and ninth-graders shared buildings in either 2010 or 2015, including Belton, Kearney, Liberty and Kansas City

Source: Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Algebra gap remains for low-income and minority students in the Kansas City area."