Is Calculus in High School Really Just an Access Issue?

How do we improve access to higher level math in high school, especially calculus?

There's a lot of talk about access.

And I was reading an article the other day that said only about half of high schools offer calculus and only about 38% of high schools that serve high poverty populations offer calculus.

And there's a lot of talk about access, especially in the policy world, in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.

There's a lot of talk about increasing access to higher level math, to increase access to college.

And I think what gets missed in a lot of those discussions is that it's not just about access.

You can't just give the opportunity to take calculus and expect that to produce results because math is one of those extremely unforgiving subjects where you have to know the prerequisite math.

Like the prerequisites are not there as a barrier.

They're not there to be mean.

They're there because if you want to succeed at the next level, you have to succeed at the current level, right?

Like the prerequisites really are prerequisites in math in a way that's not artificial, but is actually essential to building your knowledge and moving on to the next level.

So when we're talking about access to math, it can't just be, does the high school offer math?

Is the course available?

Because you can make a course available and still have no one take it.

And you can force kids to take a course, which some schools have tried to do with some math classes.

You can put them in there whether they want to be or not.

And if they don't have the prerequisite knowledge, they're not going to pass.

They're not going to succeed.

And it's going to be a terrible experience for everybody.

So I think we have to really be honest about prerequisites when it comes to math.

Like not every subject has prerequisites in the same way, but I'm of the belief that math does, and there are no shortcuts to that.

And in the policy world, especially on issues of equity, we tend to engage in magic wand thinking and just say, well, the barrier here is access.

And if we just remove that barrier, then boom everything will really improve for our students and if they're learning the same amount of math along the way and we quote unquote remove a barrier in high school you know with the senior year of high school we suddenly offer a class or require kids to take a class that they were not previously taking if the prerequisite knowledge and skill is not there that's not going to make a difference i think we just have to really come to terms with the nature of learning in mathematics.

The other reason I think we have to look at this in terms of readiness is that one of the reasons that many high schools don't offer calculus in the first place is because they don't have the demand.

So I think demand has to go hand in hand with preparation and with access.

Like if you don't have students who want to take calculus, there's not really a reason to offer it.

And I went to a pretty small high school.

We only had five kids in our calculus class And it's a lot of work to take calculus.

And I don't mean it's not for everybody in the sense that there are students who should just not be interested in calculus.

Everybody should have the opportunity to pursue this if they want to.

But it is a significant amount of work.

It is not like other classes where you do your work in class and go home and do whatever you want.

No, calculus in high school is one of those, take it home, spend one to three hours on your homework, and maybe cry a little bit and hopefully figure things out before the test.

Like if you want to pass the AP exam, which is kind of the whole point of taking calculus in high school, you're going to have multiple hours of homework a week, maybe multiple hours a night.

And frankly, not every kid is up for that.

They don't have to be.

Most kids do not need calculus to succeed in college, to get into a decent college.

Now to get into an elite college, Yes.

So if we have students who are on that pathway and really want to put in that work, absolutely, they need to have access.

They need to have good instruction all along the way to get them ready.

But I think we've just been thinking about a lot of these math access issues in the wrong way and seeing access as more magical and more powerful than it really is when really a lot of it's about preparation and a lot of it is about giving students the support they need when they have this goal that they want to pursue.

Let me know what you think.