Scaling Access and Excellence: Default Course Placements and Progression in Advanced Math

• In Event: From Access to Achievement: Expanding Advanced Learning Opportunities

Abstract

Access to advanced coursework plays a central role in shaping students’ academic trajectories, yet placement often depends on subjective decisions by schools and families. Whether to group students by ability remains highly contested. Some school systems have maintained tracked advanced pathways in the name of efficiency, while others have moved toward common coursework on equity grounds, including eliminating advanced tracks or adopting universal access policies such as Algebra for All. A recent policy approach offers a middle ground: automatically enrolling students who meet a predefined benchmark into advanced coursework. Its appeal lies in simplicity: reducing reliance on subjective judgment, limited information, and uneven family advocacy while preserving student choice. Despite rapid adoption, rigorous evidence on these policies remains limited.

This paper studies an automatic enrollment policy in Dallas, Texas that placed students into advanced 6th grade coursework in four subjects (Math, ELA, Science, and Social Studies) based on scoring above a proficiency threshold (near the 50th percentile) on 5th grade tests. We analyze this policy using a regression discontinuity design. Students just above the threshold are placed into advanced courses, while those just below are not, generating quasi-random variation in access. We utilize rich student-level administrative data from the Texas ERC, which include statewide STAAR test scores, detailed course-taking records, and student demographic information, thus allowing us to track academic performance and course trajectories from middle to high school. We examine effects on advanced course enrollment, test scores, and longer-run course-taking from 6th through 11th grades. 

Preliminary results find robust evidence of first stage 6th grade course placement, where advanced course placement jumps substantially at the threshold. Course take-up attenuates but remains detectable by 8th grade. Comparing 6th grade test scores on either side of the cutoff suggests intent-to-treat effects that are positive but imprecisely estimated, though scaling by take-up implies sizable second-stage estimates of the effect of taking advanced coursework on test scores for students near the threshold. Furthermore, we find the policy persistently accelerates advanced course taking into high school: students above the 5th grade threshold are substantially more likely to take and pass high school courses Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II one grade earlier. Our preliminary results find that first-stage estimates for 6th grade advanced coursework are similar across demographic groups, but longer-run effects on course take-up and completion are larger for girls than boys and for White students than Hispanic and Black students.

These results suggest that automatic enrollment policies can improve efficiency in course placement by using objective criteria to expand access to academically eligible students near the middle of the distribution. The policy increases early access to advanced coursework and may reduce gender gaps in advanced math progression, with implications for future STEM participation. However, longer-run persistence is weaker for underrepresented minority students and male students.

Author

• Maranna Yoder, Indiana University
  Presenting Author