Racial gaps in math have grown. A school tried closing theirs by teaching all kids the same classes

UNDATED (AP)- Racial achievement gaps in math have worsened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions to learning. Some schools have tried to bridge those gaps through detracking, or getting rid of classes that separate students by level. The goal is to level the playing field by exposing all students to the same higher concepts and standards. Experts say studies of schools that have detracked classes show achievement gaps have been narrowed with varying levels of success.

UNDATED (AP)- Hope Reed was seeing stark disparities a decade ago at her high school in the suburbs of Columbia, South Carolina.

Nearly half the school’s students were white, but the freshman remedial math classes were made up of almost all students of color. Reed, then chair of the math department at Blythewood High School, intervened with an experiment.

She taught a ninth-grade remedial class and used the regular Algebra 1 curriculum with nearly 50 students. They were honors students, and they were going to do honors work, she recalled telling them.

At the end of the year, about 90% of the students passed. The experiment convinced Reed that detracking — or getting rid of classes that separate students by achievement level — could be a key to narrowing gaps in math performance. The school then tried going a step further, enrolling all ninth-graders in the same level of math class.

Racial achievement gaps have worsened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions to learning. Math scores dropped for Black 13-year-olds far more than white 13-year-olds between the 2019-2020 and 2022-2023 school years, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Addressing those disparities is critical for strengthening students’ understanding of math, and for increasing their access to higher-paying jobs in STEM fields. Schools that have implemented detracking have aimed to level the playing field by exposing all students to the same higher concepts and standards.

Step into any American school and you’ll most likely find tracked classes, especially for math.

The practice took root during the 20th century. Following immigration waves, desegregation orders and the inclusion of special education students in classes, tracking separated those students deemed fit for higher learning from those seem as less intelligent, said Kevin Welner, an educational policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Tracking continues to reflect larger societal inequalities given that students from marginalized backgrounds often come to kindergarten or first grade already with measured achievement gaps.

Studies of schools that have detracked classes show achievement gaps have been narrowed with varying levels of success, Welner said. He pointed to the Rockville Centre school district on New York’s Long Island as the gold standard. In the 1990s, it got rid of many tracked classes in its middle school and high school, and provided training for teachers to handle students of varying levels in the same classroom. As a result, the district has seen more students take more advanced classes.

When Reed expanded detracking across ninth-grade math classes in the 2014-15 school year at Blythewood High, an additional class was also added for students who would have been placed in lower-level math classes. Those students received algebra lessons in the morning, and then took Algebra 1 with their full class.

The additional learning time offered a boost in confidence for students, Reed said.

“They didn’t go in there just blindsided, lost,” she said.

The extra math seminar also ensured the pace of learning did not slow down for students who would have been in a higher-level class.

Among the ninth-graders enrolled in the math seminar in 2014-205 was Kianna Livingston. Initially, she believed she wasn’t good at math. But Livingston, who is Black, said her confidence grew with her skills.

Livingston recalled feeling so assured of her math knowledge that she would help other students.

“It really allowed me to really own my leadership skills,” she said.

At the end of the school year — and to her surprise — she was recommended for honors Geometry the following year.

Still, tracking returned to Blythewood’s math classes.

A small group of students continued to struggle with the material despite the support from the math seminar, Reed said. By the middle of the 2014-15 school year, she realized they might fail and not receive math credit. So those students were moved to a slower-paced algebra class.

That tension highlights what some education experts say is one troubling aspect of detracking: The approach lacks flexibility for when students need more support.

“If you have kids who are really struggling at mathematics, they really need to be identified and probably treated differently in terms of curriculum and instruction than kids who are just sailing through math courses,” said Tom Loveless, an education researcher and former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied detracking for three decades

Loveless cited San Francisco as an example where detracking hasn’t helped. Since the school district eliminated tracks in middle and high schools starting in 2014, gaps between Black and Latino students and their white peers in San Francisco have only widened, he said.

Reed, who now works with just freshmen at Blythewood, said she still believes in detracking. The school’s end-of-course passing rate has never been as high as it was in 2014-15, when for at least half a year the school had completely detracked Algebra 1.

The average score for Black students on the exam was 80, up two points from the year prior. The average for white students was 83, an increase by less than one point from the year prior.

But after that first year, the school approached the setup differently. Rather than moving struggling students to another math class midyear, teachers started the school year with two lower-track math classes. The last remnant of her program, the math seminar, ended with the last school year due to changes in the school schedule.

Reed is keen on seeing this year’s end-of-course data to see how it compares with previous years, but she isn’t critical of the changes. At the core of her efforts, she said, is a desire to give all students the opportunity to try higher-level math classes.

“They just need to know they matter,” she said.

UNDATED (AP)- Laura Jackson became seriously concerned about her daughter and math when the girl was in third grade. While many of her classmates flew through multiplication tests, Jackson’s daughter relied on her fingers to count, had difficulty reading clocks and burst into tears when asked at home to practice math flashcards.

At school, the 9-year-old had been receiving help from a math specialist for two years, with little improvement.

“We hit a point where she was asking me, ‘Mom, am I stupid?’” Jackson recalled.

One day, when having lunch with a friend, Jackson heard about a disorder known as dyscalculia. She later looked up a description of the learning disability that impacts a child’s ability to process numbers and retain math knowledge. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my kid,’” Jackson said.

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students face challenges learning math due to disabilities like dyscalculia, a neurodevelopmental learning disorder caused by differences in parts of the brain that are involved with numbers and calculations. There are often obstacles to getting help.

America’s schools have long struggled to identify and support students with learning disabilities of all kinds. Kids often languish while waiting to receive a diagnosis; families frequently have to turn to private providers to get one; and even with a diagnosis, some schools are unable to provide children the help they need.

That’s slowly changing — for some disabilities. Most states have passed laws that mandate screening early elementary students for the most common reading disability, dyslexia, and countless districts train teachers to recognize struggling readers. Meanwhile, parents and experts say schools neglect students with math disabilities like dyscalculia, which affects up to 7% of the population and often coexists with dyslexia.

“There’s not as much research on math disorders or dyscalculia,” as there is on reading disabilities, said Karen Wilson, a clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in the assessment of children with learning differences. “That also trickles down into schools.”

Math scores in the U.S. have remained dismal for years and only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning struggles for some may be due to dyscalculia or other math learning disabilities, yet few teachers report their students have been screened for dyscalculia.

Experts say learning the most effective methods for teaching students with math disabilities could strengthen math instruction for all students.

“If it works for the students with the most severe disconnections and slower processing speeds, it’s still going to work for the kids that are in the ‘middle’ with math difficulties,” said Sandra Elliott, a former special education teacher and current chief academic officer at TouchMath, a multisensory math program.

Some signs of dyscalculia are obvious at an early age, if parents and educators know what to look for. Young children might have difficulty recognizing numbers or patterns. In elementary school, students may have trouble with math functions like addition and subtraction, word problems, counting money or remembering directions.

Even after Jackson learned about dyscalculia on her own, her daughter’s Seattle-area public school was doubtful the third grader had a learning disability because she was performing well in other areas. Teachers suggested Jackson spend extra time on math at home.

“For so many parents, they assume the school would let them know there’s an issue, but that’s just not how it works,” said Jackson, who ultimately wrote a book, “Discovering Dyscalculia,” about her family’s journey.

Students with dyscalculia often need a more structured approach to learning math that involves “systematic and explicit” instruction, said Lynn Fuchs, a research professor in special education and human development at Vanderbilt University.

Part of the problem is that teachers don’t receive the training needed to work with children with math disabilities. At least one state, Virginia, requires dyslexia awareness training for teacher licensure renewal, but has no similar requirement for math disability training.

“It’s pretty rare for undergraduate degrees or even master’s degrees to focus on math learning disabilities with any level of breadth, depth, quality or rigor,” said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

Without more widespread knowledge of and support for dyscalculia, many parents have had to look for specialists and tutors on their own, which they say can be particularly challenging for math, and costly. In 2019, Jackson started pulling her daughter out of school for part of each day to teach her math at home.

“I am not a math teacher, but I was so desperate,” Jackson said. “There’s no one who knows anything, and we have to figure this out.”

At the tutoring organization Made for Math, specialists have found children with dyscalculia need repetition, especially to understand math facts. Some students attend tutoring up to four days a week, at a cost of up to $1,000 a month.

“It’s hard because it’s not something schools are offering, and kids deserve it,” said Heather Brand, a math specialist and operations manager for the organization.

There are pockets of progress around the country in screening more children for math disabilities, but movement at the federal level — and in most states — is “nonexistent,” said Malone, of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

New York City is one district that has prioritized math disability screening and math instruction in the early years. In 2015 and 2016, the city spent $6 million to roll out a math curriculum featuring games, building blocks, art projects and songs. The district has also introduced universal math and reading screeners to try to identify students who may be behind.

There are ways that all schools can make math instruction more accessible, experts say. In elementary schools, activities that involve more senses should be used more widely, including whole-body motions and songs for teaching numbers and hands-on materials for math operations.

Jackson said her daughter could have benefited from a wider variety of methods at school. When the teen returned to school-based math classes in high school, after several years of learning math at home, she achieved an A in algebra.

“When you really understand what it is to be dyscalculic, then you can look around and decide what this person needs to succeed,” Jackson said. “It’s not just that you’re ‘bad at math’ and need to buckle down and try harder.”