Critics: 8th-grade algebra standard doesn’t add up

Topics planned for CSBA’s 2008 Curriculum Institute in Monterey July 11-12 included stressed-out students, state and federal education policy and the importance of research-based programs, but those discussions and others also focused on an issue that wasn’t on the agenda: the State Board of Education’s vote just days earlier to require all California eighth-graders to take Algebra 1.

“We already have our attorneys looking at this,” CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin told institute participants. CSBA is examining whether the Algebra 1 requirement represents an unfunded state mandate and thus vulnerable to a legal challenge, he explained.

“One of the biggest issues is whether this makes sense developmentally,” Plotkin said. “There are serious questions about yet-another effort to pound square pegs in round holes. There is no statutory basis for this.”

Plotkin said he was especially disturbed that an 11th-hour appeal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger derailed weeks of careful negotiations between SBE, the state Department of Education and others, including Holly Jacobson, CSBA’s assistant executive director of Policy Analysis and Continuing Education.

‘Very sad result’

Critics of the algebra mandate had urged the State Board to adopt an alternative assessment to measure eighth-grade math achievement, one that would include most algebraic concepts but that would not have required proficiency in Algebra 1. But weeks of intense negotiations failed to convince the State Board that mandating eighth-grade Algebra 1 for all students puts those who are not developmentally ready for the coursework at risk. SBE voted July 9 to adopt the onerous algebra standard, prompting CSBA and other members of the Education Coalition to join state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell in roundly criticizing the 8-1 vote.

CSBA’s Jacobson had played a key role in the negotiations.

“I’ve spent my life on this issue for the past five weeks or so,” Jacobson told the institute audience. “And we’ve just had a very sad result.”

‘Hurting kids’

Denise Clark Pope of Stanford University, a specialist on student stress, said the Algebra 1 requirement doesn’t make sense because different children are developmentally prepared to master certain academic concepts at different ages.

“Some students won’t be ready for this until ninth or 10th grade,” Pope said as she led the institute’s first general session presentation. “Some are ready in sixth or seventh.”

Pope, who shadowed five high school students for an entire year, said even the most outwardly “successful” students she studied were physically, emotionally and spiritually damaged by academic and familial pressures.

“We’re not in the shoe business, where every size 7 has to be identical,” Pope said. “Every child is different, and we have to build our educational programs around that. If we are directing every student toward the identical goal, we’re losing differentiation and creativity, and we’re hurting kids.”

‘Big pressure’

Superintendents of the Long Beach and Fresno unified school districts had come to the Curriculum Institute to showcase their Partnership for Improved Student Success, an innovative approach to sharing expertise and resources that the SBE approved earlier this year to address common problems. But the algebra issue intruded into their institute presentation, as it did with so many others.

Long Beach’s Christopher Steinhauser and Fresno’s Mike Hanson both said they were grateful that their districts have the flexibility to handle middle-school math differently under their unique experiment to boost student success. Both superintendents said they are preparing students to succeed in algebra by focusing on improved instruction at the elementary school level, through more professional development for math teachers and other strategies.

“But we don’t place all our eighth-graders in Algebra 1,” Steinhauser said. “We wait until they are ready.”

Claremont Graduate University education professor and former school superintendent Barbara DeHart closed the institute’s general session offerings with an analysis showing that major components of the federal No Child Left Behind Act lack any firm basis in research—and she extended that criticism to the state’s new algebra requirement.

Recent studies, she said, have found that ninth-graders are dropping out of school because of pressures related to NCLB. The push for eighth-grade algebra proficiency, DeHart said, “is a big part of that pressure.”

Dr. Kathy Kinley, a former middle school principal and CSBA’s immediate past president, joined DeHart’s discussion from the audience to say it’s imperative that public K-12 educators get to know researchers at colleges and universities, find out what studies are under way and suggest areas where more research is needed.

“If we’re going to be judged on the results of some of these studies, we’ve got to start driving [them],” Kinley said.