In recent years, particularly since the pandemic, countless news articles have bemoaned a crisis in math learning. Whether defined by introductory courses at Harvard University, math placement in the University of California or community college remedial courses, a consistent refrain is that students emerge from high school “profoundly underprepared” and opening access to math courses could mean “hurting students.”
Stripped of careful phrasing, the logic is familiar: Some students are deficient, fixing them is costly, and enrolling too many of them threatens institutions.
That is deficit thinking dressed in the language of stewardship. When an institution implies that certain students are the problem, it has already made a judgment about who belongs.
Consider what deficit framing erases. Imagine a first-generation student who graduates near the top of her class from an under-resourced high school in a rural district. She has taken every math course available to her through Algebra II, taught by a long-term substitute, from a textbook nearly a decade out of date. She arrives at a university, sits for a math placement exam, scores below the cutoff and is routed into non-credit remedial coursework that she may have to pay for out of pocket. It delays her progress and drains her financial aid. Within two years, she leaves without a degree.
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