Access and Equity Recommendations

Key Recommendations:

1. Move away from past practices, such as tracking that separated students, and instead develop productive practices that support learning for all*.

2. Ensure that the mathematics curriculum reflects the importance of the mathematical practices and supports and promotes conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and their application to solving real-world problems.

3. Consider teacher assignment practices to ensure that struggling students have access to effective mathematics teaching that incorporates the Mathematics Teaching Practices.

4. Develop and implement high-quality interventions.

5. Ensure that curricular and extracurricular resources are available to support and challenge all students. 

6. Develop socially, emotionally, and academically safe environments for mathematics teaching and learning—environments in which students feel safe to engage with one another and with teachers.

7. Understand and use the social contexts, cultural backgrounds, and identities of students as resources to foster access, motivate students to learn more mathematics, and engage student interest.

8. Model high expectations for each student’s success in problem solving, reasoning, and understanding. 

*Federal law has prohibited the exclusion of students from general education courses because it has been proven that separate is not equal; thus requiring "inclusion" classes to ensure each and every student has similar opportunities. These same research results and public law should be applied to general and advanced courses providing each and every student access to rigorous mathematics coursework.

Research Base:

Aguirre, Julia Maria, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, and Danny Bernard Martin. The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics Learning and Teaching: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices. Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2013. 

Biafora, Frank, and Ansalone, George. “Perceptions and Attitudes of School Principals towards School Tracking: Structural Considerations of Personal Beliefs.” Education 128, no. 4 (2008): 588–602.

Boaler, Jo, and Megan Staples. “Creating Mathematical Futures through an Equitable Teaching Approach: The Case of Railside School.” Teachers College Record 110, no. 3 (2008): 608–45. 

———. “How a Detracked Mathematics Approach Promoted Respect, Responsibility, and High Achievement.” Theory into Practice 45, no. 1 (2006): 40–46.

———. What’s Math Got to Do with It? Helping Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject—and Why It’s Important for America. New York: Penguin, 2008.

———. “Changing Students’ Lives through the De-Tracking of Urban Mathematics Classrooms.” Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 4, no. 1 (2011): 7–14.

Burris, Carol Corbett, Ed Wiley, Kevin Welner, and John Murphy. “Accountability, Rigor, and Detracking: Achievement Effects of Embracing a Challenging Curriculum as a Universal Good for All Students.” Teachers College Record 110, no. 3 (2008): 571–607.

Conway IV, B. (2021). An opportunity for the tracked. School Science and Mathematics, 121(3), 175-186.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Third Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research—The Flat Earth and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future.” Educational Researcher 36, no. 6 (2007): 318–34. 

Ellis, Mark. “Leaving No Child Behind Yet Allowing None Too Far Ahead: Ensuring (In)Equity in Mathematics Education through the Science of Measurement and Instruction.” Teachers College Record 110, no. 6 (2008): 1330–56. 

Gamoran, Adam. “Tracking and Inequality: New Directions for Research and Practice.” In The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education, edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball, and Luis Armando Gandin, pp. 213–28. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Gutiérrez, Rochelle. “Advancing African-American Urban Youth in Mathematics: Unpacking the Success of One Math Department.” American Journal of Education 109, no. 1 (2000): 63–111. 

———. “Enabling the Practice of Mathematics Teachers in Context: Towards a New Equity Research Agenda.” Mathematical Thinking and Learning 4, no. 2/3 (2002): 145–87. 

———. “The Sociopolitical Turn in Mathematics Education.” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 44, no. 1 (2013): 37–68. 

Lubienski, Sarah Theule. “Research, Reform and Equity in U.S. Mathematics Education.” In Improving Access to Mathematics: Diversity and Equity in the Classroom, edited by Na’ilah Suad Nasir and Paul Cobb, pp. 10–23. New York: Teachers College Press, 2006. 

National Research Council. Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths toward Excellence and Equity. Christopher T. Cross, Taniesha A. Woods, and Heidi Schweingruber, eds., Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics, Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2009. 

Rubin, Beth C., and Pedro A. Noguera. “Tracking Detracking: Sorting through the Dilemmas and Possibilities of Detracking in Practice.” Equity and Excellence in Education 37, no. 1 (2004): 92–101. 

Stiff, Lee V., Janet L. Johnson, and Patrick Akos. “Examining What We Know for Sure: Tracking in Middle Grades Mathematics.” In Disrupting Tradition: Research and Practice Pathways in Mathematics Education, edited by William Tate, Karen King, and Celia Rousseau Anderson, pp. 63–75. Reston, Va.:National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2011.