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 In California, a Math Problem: Does Data Science = Algebra II?

After faculty protests and a debate over racial equity, the state’s public
universities reconsider whether high school students can skip a
foundational course.
[image: Amy Harmon] <https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-harmon>

By Amy Harmon <https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-harmon>
July 13, 2023

Since 2020, California has led a contentious experiment in high school math.

That year, public universities in the state — including Berkeley and
U.C.L.A. — loosened their admissions criteria, telling high schools that
they would consider applicants who had skipped Algebra II, a cornerstone of
math instruction.

In its place, students could take data science — a mix of math, statistics
and computer science without widely agreed upon high school standards.
Allowing data science, the universities said
<https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/boars/documents/statement-on-mathematics-preparation-for-uc.pdf>,
was an “equity issue” that could send more students to college. But it also
raised concerns that some teenagers would be channeled into less
challenging coursework, limiting their opportunities once they got there.

Now, the California experiment is under review.

On Wednesday, the State Board of Education voted to remove its endorsement
of data science as a substitute for Algebra II as part of new guidelines
for K-12 schools.

“We have to be careful and deliberate about ensuring rigor,” Linda
Darling-Hammond, president of the state board, said before the vote.

The board took its cue from the state university system, which also
appeared to back away this week from data science as a substitute for
Algebra II.

A U.C. faculty committee — which controls admission requirements for the
state’s entire public university system — announced on Wednesday that it
will re-examine what high school courses, including data science, meet the
standards for “advanced math.”

The turnabout in California reflects the national quandary over how to
balance educational standards with racial and economic equity. Could data
science draw students into higher-level math? Or will offering data science
as an alternative to algebra divert students from obtaining the
quantitative skills required for a range of careers? Should there be a
workaround if higher math is blocking some students from attending college?

In California, hundreds of high schools across the state now offer data
science courses. The ability to collect and assess data is a valuable life
skill, which could benefit every student.

And California is one of 17 states that now offer data science to high
school students in some form, and at least two states, Oregon and Ohio,
offer it as an alternative to Algebra II, according to Zarek Drozda, the
director of Data Science 4 Everyone, a philanthropy-backed organization
based at the University of Chicago.

The push for data science is also complicated by the wide racial
disparities in advanced math, especially in calculus, which is a
prerequisite for most science and math majors. In 2019, 46 percent of Asian
high school graduates nationally had completed calculus, compared with 18
percent of white students, 9 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of
Black students, according to a 2022 study
<https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/sod#suggested-citation> by the
National Center for Education Statistics.

“Many educators are justifiably concerned that the calculus pathway
institutionalizes racial inequities by decreasing the number of Black and
Latino students in college,’’ Robert Gould, the author of a high school
data science course, wrote in a 2021 article
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/test.12267>. Data science
courses, he suggested, connect students’ everyday lives to their academic
careers, “which one hopes will lead to a more diverse university
enrollment.’’

But in a May 2022 letter
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23871442-letter-to-boars> to the
U.C. faculty senate committee, eight Black faculty members argued that data
science courses “harm students from such groups by steering them away from
being prepared for STEM majors.”

Race isn’t the only issue. Hundreds of faculty members from the state’s
public and private universities have signed an open letter
<https://sites.google.com/view/mathindatamatters/home> expressing concern
that substituting data science for Algebra II would lower academic
standards. Offering a way around Algebra II, they said, deprives students
of their best chance to absorb the mathematical principles increasingly
central to many fields, including economics, biology and political science.

There was also dissent from the California State University System. Its
academic senate stated in January that the shift “threatens to increase the
number of students entering the CSU who are identified as needing extra
support to succeed.”

But supporters have argued that data science is important for navigating an
increasingly number-centric society and would help more students go to, and
graduate from, college. Jo Boaler, a math education professor at Stanford
who has been a vocal proponent of data science, argued in an opinion piece
<https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-23/math-high-school-algebra-data-statistics>
in The Los Angeles Times that Algebra II is largely irrelevant for many
students: “When was the last time you divided a polynomial?”

Some faculty members said that, at the very least, students and parents
should understand that high school data science won’t even qualify a
student to take data science in college — because undergraduate data
science classes require calculus.

“The messaging is very confusing,” Brian Conrad, a Stanford professor and
director of undergraduate studies in math, said. “Who would think that
taking a course in high school chemistry would not be useful for chemistry
in college?”




Amy Harmon <https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-harmon> is a national
correspondent, covering the intersection of science and society. She has
won two Pulitzer Prizes, for her series “The DNA Age”, and as part of a
team for the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” More about Amy Harmon
<https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-harmon>



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/us/california-math-data-science-algebra.html
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