Putting the Brakes on Accelerating in Mathematics

“My child is bored in 6th-grade math and I would like them to take Algebra I over the summer.” This is a request that I have heard dozens of times over the past decade, which is dozens more times than I ever heard this request thirty years ago. I am a recovering math department chair of 14 years, and even four years removed from that role, this type of request still makes me lament the state of mathematics education. Unfortunately, mathematics has become a mechanism for parents and caregivers to credential their children with little concern for cultivating in their child a healthy curiosity and wonder about all of the beauty that mathematics beholds.

Admittedly, for a handful of students, acceleration might be the right option. However, once you squeeze the acceleration “tube of toothpaste” there is no going back. Once the door is open, many more parents and caregivers will see accelerating through math as a means for academically advantaging their child, and the most accelerated student will become the “new normal” for what parents consider to be appropriate course placement in mathematics (and it is interesting to note that of all the placements I have ever done, only a couple of them stemmed from a student who expressed a desire to be more challenged).

One issue with accelerating in mathematics is that it is often done in elementary or early secondary grades when students are often assessed on their computational fluency. This, of course, is only a very small part of what is important in learning mathematics. Once a student is accelerated, it is crucial to have an option to “off-ramp” that student if they hit a wall in a more conceptual, demanding course like geometry or precalculus. Best intentions for accelerating a student in 7th grade can potentially lead to very hard situations for that same student in their junior year when they might be earning a C in precalculus because they rushed through the important foundational learning in pre-algebra and algebra. Another unforeseen consequence of acceleration is that if (or likely when) an accelerated student hits a hurdle in learning mathematics, parents and caregivers often point fingers at the current mathematics teacher (who had no say in accelerating the student in the first place) for the reason that their child is struggling.

It is important for someone to oversee the entire trajectory of an accelerated student’s math program. Too often a kind and well-meaning middle school administrator agrees to accelerate a student in an attempt to placate the parents, only to defer a potential conflict to when the student is in the upper school. If that conflict arises, it is often because the student did not spend the time in those foundational years truly comprehending the conceptual underpinning of mathematics. And then it is too late—the new teacher gets blamed for the struggles (“but my child has always done well in math”), the new administrator scrambles to find solutions to placate the parents once again, and the child is left with the lesson that when the road to learning is hard, then the adults will clear the path.

One possible solution is to create a middle school mathematics program that stretches students “horizontally” instead of rushing them through the curriculum vertically. This can either be embedded in the curriculum or added on as electives. Local Math Circles are one good model for “horizontal” learning. Often hosted at area colleges and universities, topics such as logic, basic number theory, and graph theory are explored in a manner that is very learner-centered, and the content is accessible to curious middle school students. New England boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy has a Harkness-style approach to mathematics with lots of interesting problems that encourage deep mathematical thinking as opposed to rote memorization of skills. The Art of Problem Solving has good online enrichment courses (in addition to the standard fare of regular math courses). Parents and caregivers need to seriously consider whether they are trying to develop a mathematically curious child or a child who is good at procedures and algorithms (and that, hopefully, is a bit of a rhetorical request).

Another solution (almost non-negotiable) is to have plenty of on- and off-ramps. A student who is not ready for Algebra I in 8th grade should still have a pathway to calculus in 12th grade via summer acceleration or concurrent enrollment in Geometry and Algebra II. [Note: As a calculus teacher of 20 years, I have come to realize that statistics and data science are more useful and relevant to the majority of students. Yes, your future STEM majors will need calculus, but every other student will benefit much more from a statistics course.]  As for the student whose parents pushed them through Algebra I in 7th or 8th grade, you need upper school options to let that student’s brain development catch up to the content in case they struggle in Geometry or Algebra II. Often a bridge course (Algebra III or Functions and Trig) can be put in place between Algebra II and Precalculus.

With regard to requests for acceleration from parents and caregivers, schools should have a multi-prong assessment in place (teacher recommendation, grade, standardized test score, student reflection, etc.) with some sort of rubric as to how those will factor into the decision. The process must be transparent and communicated clearly to ALL families (not just the pushy ones). This is definitely an issue of equity and access—so making sure that the process and decisions are clear, consistent, and easy to communicate is crucial.

We will create more enthusiastic young mathematicians by giving them the time to be curious. Accelerating in mathematics needs to be done with intention, caution, and a way to apply the brakes if need be.

Josh Berberian currently serves as the coordinator of the Center for Teaching and Learning and as institutional researcher at The Episcopal Academy, where he also teaches statistics. This article was originally published in Intrepid Ed News and is posted here with permission from Josh Berberian.

Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.