The Algebra Waterloo

In my two years volunteering with San Jose-based California Community Partners for Youth (CCPY), I've worked with high school freshmen and sophomores who face a vast spectrum of challenges: distant or absent parents, pressure to join gangs, run-ins with the law. But when it comes to academics, the kids' Waterloo is almost always the same--algebra. Many public school students who earn As and Bs in their other classes fail algebra and must re-enroll multiple times. Some of them barely squeak through on their second or third try; others, discouraged by repeated failures, simply drop out. As this superb Los Angeles Times investigative piece notes, of 48,000 ninth-graders in Los Angeles schools taking beginning algebra in 2004, a staggering 44% flunked out. I haven't seen the San Jose statistics, but I imagine they're depressingly similar.

When I encountered this phenomenon firsthand, I was mystified. Why were students who were clearly not lacking in natural ability--who could hold up their end of a conversation about any subject from fetal pig dissection to social inequality--seemingly so powerless when it came to slaying their math demons?

Two years later, I haven't come up with any real answers, but I can guess at some of the factors contributing to mass algebra hara-kiri in so many urban school districts. The biggest factor is foundational. While teachers typically advance kids in sub-par learning environments from one elementary-school grade to the next without much ado, the kids aren't always internalizing the basic math facts they're supposed to be learning. Ninth-grade algebra is when this incremental falling behind really starts to snowball. All of a sudden, there are objective state standards of performance students have to meet before they can graduate. If they never quite mastered things like multiplying fractions or the concept of negative numbers years before, they'll be starting with their heads way underwater when it comes to isolating unknown variables or graphing equations--processes that require a complete understanding of nearly all the fundamental math concepts taught in earlier grades.

At this point, it's only the most determined who fight their way back to the surface--who teach themselves, or have a tutor teach them, basic math concepts that should already be old hat, and then go on to learn to apply these basic concepts to more complex problems. Mixed-metaphor alert: It's like trying to salvage your game in Tetris when your blocks are piled almost all the way to the top. I'm amazed by kids who manage to pull this off, but school districts need to bolster early math instruction to ensure that students never have to play this frustrating game of catch-up in the first place.