JOB TALK: Education and Poverty

Improving Academic Performance in Chicago Public Schools: The Effect of Double-Dose Algebra Policy

There is a nationwide push to increase the rigor of high school coursework so that all students are college-ready at graduation. Performance in freshman math has long been thought to have a significant impact on high school outcomes. The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that only 35 percent of students enter high school with adequate math proficiency; black and Hispanic rates are even lower at 13 and 20 percent, respectively. These low performance metrics may explain the high failure rates observed in 9th grade coursework.  In Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the focus of this study, roughly half of high school freshmen fail at least one course, with the highest failure rates in math. Concern about this fact and the apparent failure of remediation before high school led CPS to implement a “double-dose algebra” policy, beginning with students entering high school in the fall of 2003. Under this policy, students scoring below the national median on an 8th grade math test were assigned two periods of freshman algebra rather than one. I find that this program, which doubled instructional time, altered peer composition and emphasized problem solving skills, produced attainment and achievement effects (higher college entrance exam scores, high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates) far beyond what the math test score effects would have predicted. 

Kalena Cortes (B.A., University of California-San Diego; Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley) is an Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. She studies issues of educational opportunity and social equality, focusing on identifying educational policies that help disadvantaged students at the K-12 and postsecondary levels. Her recent work examines the effects of double-dose algebra and course scheduling policies on student achievement, affirmative action policies in higher education, and the effect of legal status on college enrollment of immigrant youth. She has been published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Economics of Education Review, National Tax Journal, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, and The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. Her work has also garnered wider attention and is featured in Education Week, Houston Chronicle, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Education Next, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. Dr. Cortes has received grants and fellowships from the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Education/Institute of Education Sciences. She recently received a three-year faculty fellowship from the Greater Texas Foundation to study ways in which institutions and state policies can help bolster the number of minority and low-income high school graduates who go on to achieve a college degree.