Janet Johnson and John Whittle:
When academic achievement and advanced enrollment diverge
In 2009, North Carolina administrators were becoming more aware that enrollment in advanced math classes was not done by academic achievement, largely due to the new trend of federal grants aimed at increasing enrollment of low-income and minority students. The North Carolina Association of School Administrators hired us to work with SAS to investigate how math placement related to math achievement in all school districts in the state.
SAS Institute analyzed academic scores and math course enrollment patterns for all of North Carolina and for each school system. SAS Institute is a leading global provider of advanced analytics and statistical software, with over 12,000 employees and more than 80,000 customer sites in 140 countries, making it a major player in enterprise data solutions across industry and academia. Their analysis revealed the extent of these placement gaps. Among 7th graders with strong statistical predictions for success in advanced math, fewer than 50% were actually placed in 8th-grade algebra. At the same time, many students in those advanced classes had lower success predictions than students who were not recommended for the class.
This is not a small problem affecting a few students. This analysis revealed a systematic failure affecting tens of thousands of children across North Carolina alone, wasting human potential on a massive scale. The study done in 2009 showed that about 35,000 North Carolina middle school students were predicted to be successful in 8th-grade algebra but were not enrolled. They went on to take 9th-grade algebra, and more than 25,000 of them scored at the highest level on the 9th-grade algebra end-of-grade test. Yet despite this demonstrated high performance, they remained in the standard track rather than advancing to more rigorous mathematics courses, such as Honors, Advanced Placement, or IB math classes.1