by Dr. Watson Scott Swail, President & Senior Research Scientist

There is an interesting article on the Washington Post website dated yesterday (November 18, 2025) about how race is aligned with who gets to take algebra in middle school. The thesis of the article is that early algebra is offered less to Black and Hispanic students than other students, including and especially White and Asian students.

Like a lot of equity issues, this one has legs and we have heard it over and over for the past 50+ years. Thirty years ago, when I worked at The College Board near Dupont Circle, I was part of the EQUITY 2000 project team, a $27 million project that worked with six large, urban school districts across the country. The purpose of the program was to have eighth grade students complete ALG I and ninth-grade students complete Geometry. It was focused primarily on Black and Hispanic students in these schools.  

The executive director of the program and my former boss, Vinetta Jones, explained the program as such: “We were looking at using math as a lever to drive reform across whole school districts in ways that students will be prepared to go on and graduate from college.”[1] However, even in the EQUITY 2000 districts change was hard to come by. More than a third of students in pilot districts still failed algebra.

The program ostensively “worked,” but there were many challenges. First, you don’t just “teach up” students who were grades behind other students. Getting ALG I completed in the 8th grade meant a lot of work in all the grades prior to that. Second, districts had trouble making these changes around their schools in an equitable way and providing enough PD support. Third, once the money left, so did the reforms.

To provide some data gravity to this issue, let’s take a look at the 2024 NAEP mathematics data for fourth- and eighth grades. We will look at two factors: Socio-economic status (SES) and race/ethnicity. Both matter because they are intertwined. With regard to SES, NAEP shows us that 79 percent of high socio-economic students (SES) fourth-graders scored above the average national mathematics score compared to 32 percent of low SES students.[2] Reversed, only 21 percent of high SES students scored below average on NAEP math compared to 68 percent of low SES students. For eighth-grade students the results tell the same story: 75 percent of high SES students scored above average on compared to 25 percent of low SES students.

We see similar trends by race/ethnicity. For students in the fourth-grade NAEP Math cohort:

• 30 percent of Black students scored above average
• 40 percent of Hispanic students scored above average
• 66 percent of White students scored above average
• 75 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander students scored above average

And in eighth grade?

• 26 percent of Black students scored above average
• 33 percent of Hispanic students scored above average
• 63 percent of White students scored above average
• 79 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander students scored above average

I’ve used NAEP scores for over 30 years because they tell a very important story in public and private K12 education, let alone a story of how poor our pipeline to college is in America for those who have been historically underrepresented in postsecondary education. The data (and above graphic) illustrate the story clearly: the academic damage to students is done by the time they are in the fourth grade. Students don’t catch up by the eight grade. We don’t teach students up from that point. Many students from low-income backgrounds and of color are significantly behind in the three Rs: reading, writing, and mathematics. And they don’t proceed any better by the 12th grade.

The point in the article is well taken. Black and Hispanic students, as well as others, are not afforded the opportunity to ramp-up their mathematics (and other) education as other students are. This is in part due to the system in place. But the real issue and disservice is that we don’t pounce on during the early years. Playing with manipulatives that literally become the building blocks for future knowledge in Pre-K to third grade is critical to pursuing more advance studies later in a young person’s life. We miss that boat every time and have yet to do much about it.

High school is far too late. Middle school is too late. This is a pre-school and early elementary school issue. Until we understand that, this story will be rewritten in another 30 years. With the same details and findings.

Perhaps the federal government could create a large-scale, site-based program to spur this on? Oh… did I write that outloud? Seemed like a good idea…

I will digress to end this Swail Letter. The reason that a federal role in education is important is because only the federal government is the only entity that has the funding to make large-scale changes and provide important and neccessary research and development for states and districts. It’s been doing it for well over half a century. The states simply do not have that level of funding to do this things, perhaps with the exception of California and New York, and we have never been able to trust every state to do the right thing. There is a litany of students who were left to wither on the educational vine due to state politics and the inability of those in charge to do the right thing for their citizens. The federal role is critical in providing leadership while not prescribing policy that would subvert state legislatures. That’s it.

FWIW.

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[1] https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/college-board-to-expand-equity-2000-program/1996/11.

[2] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/mathematics/2024/g4_8/performance-by-student-group/?grade=4.