Study on Sequoia Union High School District shows success of math detracking

The study “Accelerating Opportunity: The Effects of Instructionally Supported Detracking” was conducted and authored by Stanford Professor Thomas Dee and postdoctoral research Dr. Elizabeth Huffaker.

Rather than placing students in remedial math, the district reduced from three to one the number of math tracks for ninth graders deemed at or below grade-level, and results have shown dramatically improved academic outcomes, the study shows. 

“What Sequoia Union did was focused in particular on some of their more educationally vulnerable students and they raised expectations for what those students can achieve and they provided supports to their teachers so they’d be better able to support the potential in their students,” Dee said. 

Results from the study show that the propensity for students to sustain placement on a particular track over time — what the district is hoping to steer clear from — is “very high” for students on the remedial track. 

On the 11th grade SBAC test — the state’s exam for high school math proficiency — there was indication of a year’s gain of learning from those randomly assigned to the Algebra I Initiative course rather than those who were in a remedial course their freshman year, Dee said. 

“Given this strikingly positive collection of results for students deemed to have low levels of proficiency, several implementation and policy details of the initiative deserve particular attention,” the paper concludes. 

California has been “ground zero for highly contested debates” about math curriculum, Dee said. A pendulum swing from an “algebra for all” initiative to what he glibly called “algebra for none” has resulted in policy making that tends to be “crude and lacks appropriate nuance.” 

Dee said the district’s initiative allows for necessary differentiation in how the curriculum serves students. 

The district’s diversity also poses a particularly interesting study on offering quality education to students who come from significantly different economic and educational backgrounds, Dee said. 

Critics of detracking often have concerns that high-achieving students will not be challenged, Superintendent Crystal Leach said. However, the study showed that students who entered at grade level were not negatively impacted by learning alongside students who entered high school below grade level. 

Students who entered ninth grade above grade level were assigned to geometry or higher and were not included in the study’s analysis. 

“We don’t want to shut the door on a student’s future opportunity; we have a responsibility to ensure that all of our students have the chance to discover what they are capable of with support from their teachers,” Leach said in a press release.  

The professional support provided to teachers is what really makes the initiative unique, Dee said.

“When you’ve got students who’ve had varying degrees of success in mathematics in the classroom, it requires a higher level of teacher skill to understand where each student is and support where they’re going,” Dee said

Teachers received 15 days of professional development, an extra planning period, four coaching days per site per semester, a districtwide professional learning community and a partner teacher at their campus. 

In addition, teachers were taught how to approach students of varying math proficiencies, which showed up in the language used, how assignments were structures, the pacing of lesson plans, and how they messaged to students what they were capable of achieving, Dee said. 

“One part of the training teachers received was to emphasize to students that they were capable of learning this material and were expected to go on from algebra to take geometry,” Dee said. “They’re signaling high expectations and the teacher's faith in the capacity of students to meet those expectations.” 

Academic success was evident in the study, but residual benefits were also of note. 

Since the pandemic, Dee said there has been a “pandemic flight” from public to private schooling, and many districts throughout the state are struggling with chronic absenteeism. 

“One of the compelling ways to address this, both enrollment loss and chronic absenteeism, is by providing students with more engaging instruction,” Dee said. 

Kids assigned to the algebra initiatives classes had “substantially lower levels” of chronic absenteeism and were more likely to stay enrolled in the district, the study showed. 

This is particularly interesting when considering that the initiative targeted educationally vulnerable students, Dee said. 

“When I see kids who are assigned to a more academically rigorous class actually showing up more for school, even though they are in a hard class, that’s consistent with all the evidence on the role of stigma that may exist from being in a remedial class,” Dee said.

Though Dee said this is more conjectural than what data in the study can show, considering the socialized environment of a school, attenuating that can be a mechanism for prompting academic engagement. 

The district’s goal is to equip students to be college ready by the time they graduate. The University of California and California State University systems both require three years of math taken in high school, and to at least complete the advanced algebra course. 

“Participating in this research was critical to us because we know that the level of math a student takes in high school can affect their future career and work opportunities, and even affect their lifetime earnings," Leach said in a press release. 

By providing algebra to students who might not have had access to the course until 10th grade, and understanding that sometimes students may need to retake a course, the district is giving “capable students more at-bats” Dee said. 

“This combination of higher expectations and supports helped many of them be college ready, and the fact that we otherwise would have left all the hidden potential on the floor, I think, is really lamentable,” Dee said.

ana@smdailyjournal.com

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