Algebra 1 has long been at the heart of Cambridge’s math controversy, beginning when the district removed it from middle schools in 2017 due to concerns with leveling Algebra 1 was only being provided to the students deemed ready for it, and these were overwhelmingly white or asian, and had higher socioeconomic backgrounds. In August, Algebra 1 returned to preteens, this time through, a course aimed for all, rather than a select few. The results of this change will be spoken about in the School Committee meeting on June 11th.
Jacob Barandes, a parent and academic who has become involved in the controversy, worries that this reintegration may not be feasible. “In some of these classes some students are two or three grades behind, and others are two or three grades ahead,” he told the Register Forum. “It’s just not reasonable to think that a teacher can cover a span of five or six grade levels in one classroom.”
For Siobahn Mulligan, the Director of Mathematics in Cambridge, this has been a huge challenge, but one that she is prepared to face. “The hill that I choose to die on is my equity lens,” Mulligan said to the Register Forum. “In rolling out Algebra 1, I feel the obligation to make sure it’s available to all.”
In addition, some are concerned with the timespan of the course. The current plan requires the acceleration of previous sixth, seventh, and eighth grade material in order to fit the new algebra work; this means that the algebra coursework, which is online, will need to be severely condensed.
“The idea was a really impossible one,” said a math educator familiar with the situation. “It’s a 200 hour course with homework that is now going to be condensed into 15 hours of instructional time.”
Even more concerns abounded around the lack of additional resources for math educators, a concept that School Committee member Elizabeth Hudson finds difficult to support. “We’ve got this really ambitious goal that you signed up for. What do you need in order to get there?” she recalled asking curriculum leaders. The answer, she told the Register Forum, was nothing. “This is the point at which I become uncomfortable,” Hudson stated. “Fundamentally, just as a consumer of the product, I do not understand how you’re going to get a different outcome without different inputs.”
With no supplemental district support, teachers were only informed of the change in August, leaving them little time and abilityto prepare. An educator familiar with the situation told the Register Forum, “There were hardly any resources invested in this, from what I could tell, and some schools didn’t even have the program because they could not find a teacher who could be willing to take it on.”
Still, while many are uncertain about the methods used to incorporate the Algebra 1 curriculum, all of those interviewed agreed that the addition was an improvement overall. “This plan is going to take some work to implement and it could be a bumpy road at times,” Barandes said, but added that, “Right now, it’s very promising and I’m certainly very happy to see that [adding Algebra 1] was the outcome.”
This article also appears in our June 2024 print edition.
