ANN ARBOR—When it comes to the high school mathematics curriculum, more courses are not necessarily better, says a University of Michigan researcher.

Students who attend high schools with fewer lower-level math courses to choose from?courses less demanding than algebra, geometry and calculus?progress further through the math curriculum and achieve at higher levels than students at schools offering more options in basic math classes.

“Offering too many low-end courses keeps many students from moving very far into the more academic end of the curriculum,” says Valerie E. Lee, U-M professor of education. “If schools stop offering so many undemanding courses, if the curriculum becomes narrower and more academic, our research suggests that all students would take math courses that would be advantageous to them in terms of achievement on important gateway tests.”

Lee and her colleagues’ study of 3,430 students in 184 public and private high schools in and around the nation’s 30 largest cities comes on the heels of a recent report by the U.S. Department of Education that suggests that high school students who take rigorous math classes are more successful in college and in the work force.

The researchers found that students at “high-progress” schools?those where students complete many advanced math courses, such as pre-calculus and calculus, and few lower-level classes?attain scores on a 12th-grade math test that are more than 40 percent higher than the test scores of students at “low-progress” schools.

Further, almost no students at “high-progress” schools complete coursework below the level of algebra and they receive an average grade of “B-” in the ninth-grade math course, compared with a “C” average for ninth-grade math students at “low-progress” schools that offer, on average, nearly twice as many lower-level math classes, Lee says.

According to the study, the number and type of math courses offered and taken in high school are related to several characteristics of schools and of the students who attend them.

For example, on average, students at schools with more minority students and more students from low-income families make less progress through the math curriculum, Lee says. On the contrary, students at smaller schools and at private schools make more progress.

However, regardless of students’ social backgrounds, their academic status upon entering high school and the kind of high school they attend, students’ progress in the math course “pipeline” and their achievement are adversely affected when there are high proportions of low-achieving students in the school, Lee says.

“It is clear that both the academic and the social composition of high schools influences students’ academic development, above and beyond their own academic and social status,” she says. “We argue that these elements of the social context of secondary schooling should not be taken as a given. Rather, we believe that such sturdy and consistent findings about unequal access to high-quality education should be actively debated in the policy arena.”

Lee says that schools that offer a vast array of lower-level math courses to meet student demands and desires are “taking the easy way out.” Such classes, she says, should not count toward fulfilling graduation requirements and should serve only as remediation meant to prepare students for more rigorous academic courses. Only more rigorous classes should satisfy graduation requirements in mathematics, she says.

Math training should be more demanding for all students, beginning in the elementary and middle school grades, to prepare them to succeed in rigorous high school courses, she adds.

“If keeping students in school is the major goal?without regard to what they learn?then it is reasonable for educators to design their curricular offerings to appeal to those who might otherwise leave,” Lee says. “Clearly, this logic has driven curriculum planning for many decades.

“We argue, however, that educators have a higher obligation to make decisions about what all of their students should learn. If the locus of decision-making about what to learn and about how deeply to engage in the educational enterprise is left solely to children and families, rather than to educators willing to take a normative stance about what is best, then children whose families are without good information about what young people need to succeed in their future undertakings may be unable to guide their children toward good decisions.”

Lee’s colleagues on the study included U-M faculty member David T. Burkam and doctoral students Todd K. Chow-Hoy, Becky A. Smerdon and Douglas E. Geverdt.

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