Imagine you are a child from a poor family. (Might be hard to do — after all you are clearly an elite individual who reads Pirate Wires.) This next step might be a little easier: imagine you also live in San Francisco.

One day in class, an administrator walks in, tears of joy welling up in her eyes.

“I have some really wonderful news for everyone, but especially for you Poor Jimmy,” she says.

Maybe your school won a nationwide competition. Or an awesome surprise field trip is about to be announced. Something is looking up for you, finally.

Then the administrator smiles and says “Algebra has been banned for Middle Schoolers!”

Huh?

Here’s a math problem: How long can a district get away with removing Algebra in the name of “equity” before parents fighting tooth and nail are able to undo the disastrous decision?

About 12 years.

Last month, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) board voted to bring Algebra I back to middle schools for the 2026-2027 school year.

Back in 1996, only 27 percent of eighth-graders were taking algebra. Then, in 1997, California published new math standards that made the course typical for middle-school students; by 2013, 67 percent of students in the state were taking algebra before high school.

In 2010, California adopted a new set of standards based on Common Core, reversing the previous recommendation and pushing Algebra I back to ninth grade, replacing it with “Math 8.” Besides the move being a clear regression, a problem arises when students don’t take algebra before high school: students are then, by default, no longer on track to complete Calculus by the time they graduate — which is integral for admission to top universities.

While other school districts simply adopted the new standards and offered algebra for more advanced students, SFUSD didn’t want to be derivative. In 2014, the SFUSD board voted to remove algebra from all middle schools in the district.

How did they justify removing a once-standard math course while calling it “progress”?

Equity, of course.

“Having one core sequence… supports equity by creating one path for all students,” wrote Stanford Professor of Math Education Jo Boaler, justifying the removal to parents. Boaler, who’s built a career out of “reforming” math education in California, is a vocal critic of “tracking” (placing students in classes that align with their skill level) and has provided the academic legitimacy needed to enact some of the most radical changes to education in the state. At the board meeting going over the removal of algebra, Boaler was thanked by name.

Unsurprisingly, several members of the school board mentioned in the same meeting that they were facing pushback from parents. But rather than actually trying to parse why families might be upset, the board confidently pushed ahead.

Of course, it was difficult to explain how removing algebra would benefit children. Justifying it entirely on the grounds of “equity” was a tough sell. When one member of the school board, playing devil’s advocate, asked Jim Ryan, the STEM Executive Director of SFUSD, to respond to parents who felt “something is being taken away” from kids, Ryan promised that Common Core will be even more rigorous than what came before it. Students will “do math that redefines what counts as math,” he said. You see, a “rich math task” will be assigned that gives students at every level the opportunity to learn and grow. Simple!

Another argument used to justify removing math tracks: it would, supposedly, improve “student achievement.” Boaler herself had published a study that claimed to show students would benefit from “mixed-ability” classrooms as opposed to homogenous ones. (Obviously, in order to have a class of “mixed-ability” you have to prevent higher achieving students from being placed on a different math track.)

There was just a slight problem with Boaler’s study (which Pirate Wires covered previously): Three math professors found her data supported the opposite conclusion. Assessments showed that all students did worse in the mixed-ability classroom.

But that didn’t stop SFUSD. Armed with dubious statistics and teachers who were weirdly too enthusiastic about switching to Common Core, they removed algebra from middle schools entirely in 2014.