Algebra For All Yields Failure for Many
The San Francisco Chronicle shared news Friday from a new report from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning that raises questions about the wisdom of placing all students in Algebra in the 8th grade:
California students who fail algebra and repeat the course are pretty much doomed to fail again, a vicious cycle that wastes limited resources and precious learning time, according to a report released Friday.
Just over a third of students in the 24 school districts studied had to repeat Algebra I either in ninth or 10th grade, yet even after a second year of study, relatively few were proficient in the subject.
Of those who took the class in eighth grade and repeated it as freshmen, just 1 in 5 scored at a