How is math going in my city’s public schools?

[I now cross-post on Substack, if you prefer to read or subscribe there.]

My children attend the public schools in Somerville, Massachusetts. It’s an urban suburb of Boston.

I started hearing about math curriculum changes in 2018, when there was drama about neighboring Cambridge (home of Harvard and MIT) removing Algebra 1 as an option in 8th grade. I think algebra is only one indicator of a larger change, but it’s the one people have latched on to.

Common concerns are:

• The standard path to advanced high school math starts with Algebra 1 before high school, so that you can take 4 years of high school math including calculus. Students who don’t start this path on time will be hard-pressed to complete calculus, which STEM-focused universities want.
• A lack of advanced options means kids who are strong at math will be bored in classes below their level, and will achieve less as adults than they could if they could move through math levels faster.
• While keeping everyone in the same classes is typically done in hopes of improving equity, a one-size-fits-all curriculum needlessly holds back talented kids of all demographics.
• This is part of a general conflict about how to improve outcomes for struggling kids while allowing others to excel where they’re strong. 

I wondered: if my kids turn out to be strong in math, will they have the chance to move ahead? Are we stunting a generation of kids who could be doing more? 

The key things I found:

• Math tracking (having different levels of math class by ability) in Somerville middle schools ended around 2018. Algebra I hasn’t been offered in 8th grade since at least that far back. I’m not clear on whether there’s tracking for other subjects.
• At the high end of achievement: the number of kids studying calculus is increasing steadily over time. It’s hard to tell how much of this is because of something the school district is doing, and how much is because of a richer student population with more educated parents.
• But average student math scores have been very low (~40% of students proficient) since the pandemic.

How it’s going at the high end

AP (advanced placement) test scores seem to have stayed pretty steady in difficulty level over the last few decades. And if fewer students are reaching calculus, we should be able to see it here because fewer kids would be taking the exams. What I found in Somerville AP scores:

• Way more kids are taking AP exams than they did a decade ago. This is true in general as well as in math: the total number of AP exams taken at Somerville High has almost quadrupled in the last 15 years.
• Over time, more students are getting at least a 3 on an AP calculus exam.
• The increase is present both overall, and in disadvantaged groups.

I looked at the AP calc test-takers at 5-year intervals.

Year	Total students passing any AP Calculus exam (score 3 or higher)	Total students taking any AP Calculus exam	Low-income students taking any AP Calculus exam	Latino students taking any AP Calculus exam	Black students taking any AP Calculus exam
2024 (8th grade in 2020)	31 (10% of 12th grade)	61	16	11	5
2019 (8th grade in 2015)	26 (8% of 12th grade)	36	10	4	3
2014 (8th grade in 2010)	11 (4% of 12th grade)	12	7	3	0
2009 (8th grade in 2010)	10 (4% of 12th grade)	12	2	0	0

In chart form:

It’s not just rich white kids:

This all seems like good news!

Caveats:

• We can’t see pass rates for any division of fewer than 10 students. But the overall pass numbers are growing where we can see them, while the total high school population stayed pretty steady.
• A few students are probably taking the calculus exam earlier than 12th grade.
• Some of these students may not have gone to Somerville middle schools; e.g. in Cambridge, high schoolers coming from other schools were much more likely to place out of Algebra 1 than those who attended Cambridge middle schools.
• This metric is just the thing that’s most visible to me from afar, and doesn’t give a picture of what student experiences are like or a bunch of other more nuanced things.

How it’s going at the low end

According to the standardized test (MCAS), only 39% of Somerville High 10th graders are at least “proficient” in math. Ouch.

MCAS proficiency is no longer required to graduate. I’m guessing that many students who graduate do so with very limited math understanding, as Kelsey’s excellent piece illustrates.

Curriculum

I see at least a dozen articles and discussions about Cambridge’s algebra drama, and nothing at all about Somerville’s. Somerville removed middle school tracking at the same time, and for some reason got no attention (fewer Harvard professors?) I eventually flagged down my child’s school principal at back-to-school night to find out what the middle school math situation was, because I couldn’t find anything online about what classes were offered.

She told me there are no different math classes by ability in middle school. The 8th grade teachers supposedly offer some enrichment for kids who are ready for more, but it’s hard to imagine how much enrichment is really possible for one adult to provide 20 kids who are all over the map in math ability. 

The whole district now uses the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, although I think they must use something else for some advanced classes that IM doesn’t offer. The math education subreddit has mixed opinions on this curriculum, as it does on every single other curriculum. When I’ve browsed my kids’ materials, the approach seems fine to my uninformed eyes.

The other big change: the city got richer

Housing has also gotten much more expensive.

Many of the “Old Somerville” working class families have been priced out, and more residents are “New Somerville” tech workers. (My family has a bit of both, since Jeff grew up nearby but is a Tech Person. Most of his childhood friends either work in tech or are dead of drug overdoses.) 

You see the economic shift in school enrollment: 40% of last year’s kindergarteners are from low-income families, compared to 56% a decade before. So you’d expect rising math scores as these richer children of tech workers hit high school. I suspect this may be what’s driving a lot of the change we saw above on the top end.

My takeaways

If removing tracking is hurting advanced students, that’s sure not what the AP tests are showing. Maybe it’s just that the rising economic tide is lifting all the students, and there would be even more kids excelling if tracking hadn’t ended and there were more advanced math options in middle school? But I don’t know how we would tell that.

All I can see is how some of the numbers have changed; there’s a lot that’s not captured here.

The situation where most students are below grade level still seems bad. This is true in most of the US and isn’t special to Somerville.

Misc:

• Somerville is an urban area with 81,000 people. The city is mostly white, but Somerville High is plurality Latino. About half the students are low-income, and most students’ first language is not English.
• The city has several middle schools but one main high school; there’s a very small alternate high school program for kids with special needs, which I haven’t included.
• I’m curious what proportion of Somerville students are educated outside the public schools, and what they’re studying there, but I couldn’t find that.
• The high school seems to have offered more AP math classes over time: adding statistics in 2014, and BC calc in 2018, if the AP test-taking records indicate this.
• Some families I know pay for extracurricular math classes like Russian School of Math or Art of Problem Solving, either because the kid loves math or because the parents want their kid to be a high achiever.
• The top end isn’t that relevant to my family so far, because none of my kids are above grade level at math. See: Most kids of smart parents will be pretty ordinary.