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The report by Tom Loveless finds that the nation’s push to challenge more students by placing them in advanced math classes in eighth grade has had unintended and damaging consequences, as some 120,000 middle-schoolers are now struggling in advanced classes for which they are woefully unprepared.
"The ‘democratization of algebra’ sounds like a worthy goal – it certainly stems from good intentions," says Tom Loveless, the Brown Center’s director and author of the new study, which is being released as an advance excerpt of the 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education.
But, he adds, "when a large number of students who don’t even know basic arithmetic are placed in classes with students several grade levels ahead of them, the result is false democratization. That’s bad for the misplaced students, and it’s bad for their well-prepared classmates too."
The full report will be published in December 2008.
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Information about other Brown Center events and publications, please visit the Brown Center's website at: http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/0922_education_loveless.aspx
Source: Brown Center on Education Policy
