Why is accelerating middle school math a practice we readily buy into? There are so many reasons we cite, including, parent status, Calculus in high school, and challenging students who need enrichment. Let’s look individually at each argument for middle school math acceleration.
Calculus in high school
Recent data by Jo Boaler, a Stanford University Mathematics Educator, states that nationally, 10-16% of incoming college freshmen are required to take Calculus for their college major. Let me repeat that number in a different way. 90-84% of the incoming college freshmen, across the country, are required to take a different math course other than Calculus. These freshmen are required to take math courses such as Finite Math, Quantitative Reasoning, and Discrete Math. These required courses consist of statistics, probability, linear algebra, matrices, and logical thinking. For those of you not familiar with these topics, these are not PreCalculus or Calculus topics. Courses such as Algebra 2 and PreCalculus do very little to prepare students for the courses that 90-84% of college freshmen are required to take. Instead, students should be enrolled in high school courses such as Statistics, Probability, Quantitative Reasoning and Discrete Math as AP or Dual Credit courses. Additionally, educators, students and parents have been led to believe that Calculus is the pathway for any college bound student. We do a disservice to our students by pushing them into a pathway that does not provide prerequisite support for the college courses they will need to take for their major course of study. If 90-84% of college bound students don’t need to select the Calculus pathway to graduation, then there is no longer the need for course acceleration in middle school. Under the current graduation requirements, if a student wants to have the opportunity to enroll in additional math courses in high school, they can simply double up their sophomore year by taking Algebra 2 and Geometry at the same time. This is a more meaningful pathway to advanced courses in mathematics in high school.
Challenging students who need enrichment
There is a variety of quality, peer reviewed research supporting that tracking kids is bad for all kids. There is the issue of the ‘low classes’ seeing themselves as low and the teachers lowering their expectations of these students. I often hear educators say things like “I have the low students in that class, they aren’t able to do that (fill in the blank).” This is a real thing! Students will rise to the expectations we set for them. Tracking also doesn’t support learning for the ‘high students’ either because what we often end up doing is accelerating into the next grade level’s content which causes those students to miss critical middle school math content. We rush to push them into Algebra 1 in middle school which can create gaps in their learning by ‘skipping’ grade level standards. Students need to interact and collaborate with students with different ideas and strategies to enable them to better understand mathematics. Going deeper, not farther in the standards is the answer for enrichment for students who are ready. When students at the same level work together they often don’t experience the challenge they do when working with various leveled peers.
There are many strategies that math teachers can employ to differentiate in their classrooms that will accomplish the need for enrichment without harming students by tracking them.
Parents need their students in the advanced classes
One of the major driving forces for accelerating students in math and offering advanced or honors courses in middle school is the need for parents to say their child is enrolled in these classes. Although the data show acceleration, as it is currently being done, has a negative impact on students, yet we continue to push high school math down to the middle school because parents demand it.
As the landscape shifts for college bound students, we need to rethink the way we ‘accelerate’ students’ math experiences in middle school.