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Whether or not to sort students by incoming skills has been a contentious issue. This brief shows that there are potential costs and benefits to both approaches. Even with the same curriculum, the consequences of sorting depend on students' incoming skills and the outcomes being considered. This brief highlights a critical role skill-based sorting plays in shaping students' academic achievement, given a common curriculum for all students. It summarizes findings from a number of prior studies to show what happened after Chicago Public Schools (CPS) introduced two curricular reforms that drastically changed how schools sorted students into classrooms while aiming to teach the same curricular content (Algebra I) to everyone. One policy reduced skill-based sorting and the other increased skill-based sorting. Both policies showed that how schools sort students into classrooms is as important as the content students are exposed to in those classrooms--for students' learning gains, for the grades they receive, and for their pass rates.

Algebra is often considered as a gateway for later achievement. A recent report by the Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) underscores the importance of improving algebra learning in secondary school. Today, a growing number of states and districts require algebra for all students in ninth grade or earlier. Chicago is at the forefront of this movement. Many low-achieving students took remedial math before 1997 and the algebra-for-all policy immersed these students in academic coursework for the first time. Moreover, these low-achieving students experienced a rise in the ability levels of their classroom peers. However, this study suggests that simply requiring algebra is insufficient to improve their outcomes, even though students may benefit from having higher achieving peers in their classrooms. Overall, taking Algebra, instead of remedial math, would have no significant effect and this may be because students lack sufficient skills to handle algebra. Chicago subsequently implemented double-dose algebra to address this problem, and research showed that offering extended instructional time and instructional supports to teachers was successful in improving algebra learning of low achieving students (Nomi and Allensworth, 2009; 2010). Table and figures are appended.

In Chicago, over a quarter of students fail at least one semester of algebra in their ninth grade year, and only 13% of students who fail both semesters of Algebra I in ninth grade graduate in 4 years. Offering credit recovery options is one strategy to deal with high failure rates. The primary goal of credit recovery programs is to give students an opportunity to retake classes that they failed in an effort to get them back on track and keep them in school (Watson & Gemin, 2008). While it seems like a good idea, the pay-off may not actually be large for a number of reasons: few students who failed in the prior year may show up in the summer for credit recovery; few students may pass even if they do show up; and the gains of attending summer school for learning and for credit accumulation may be very small compared to students' initial deficits in skills or the number of total credits they eventually need to recover. This study examines the benefits of offering expanded credit recovery options for ninth grade algebra, relative to business as usual (i.e., the summer programming schools would offer in the absence of efforts to expand credit recovery). The study incorporates all regular neighborhood high schools in Chicago (76) and all first-time ninth grade students who entered these schools (about 4,000 students in each cohort) between fall 2009 and fall 2011 who failed second semester algebra (Algebra IB). Tables and figures are appended.

The consequences of failing core academic courses during the first year are dire. In Chicago, over a quarter of students fail at least one semester of algebra in their ninth grade year, and only 13% of students who fail both semesters of Algebra I in ninth grade graduate in 4 years. Offering credit recovery options is one strategy to deal with high failure rates. The primary goal of credit recovery programs is to give students an opportunity to retake classes that they failed in an effort to get them back on track and keep them in school (Watson & Gemin, 2008). It makes theoretical sense to try to get students to recover their algebra credits early, in the summer after ninth grade--before they take geometry or Algebra II and chemistry, and to put them back on track towards graduation. But there is little evidence about the extent to which expanding credit recovery leads to substantive improvements in student progression and outcomes. Using a population of all first-time ninth grade students who entered regular neighborhood high schools in Chicago between 2008-2012, this study examines the benefits of offering expanded credit recovery options for ninth grade algebra, relative to business as usual (i.e., the summer programming schools would offer in the absence of efforts to expand credit recovery). Some CPS high schools in the study received funding to implement at least two Algebra I credit recovery courses during the summer sessions of 2011 and 2012--at least one online and one face-to-face section. Fifteen schools participated in 2011; in total they offered 18 pairs of sections (36 total). Thirteen schools participated in 2012; in total they offered 20 pairs of sections (40 total). Preliminary findings suggest that participation in this study did significantly expand access to credit recovery options. It sets the stage for the analyses of the effects of expanding credit recovery on school- and student-level outcomes that will be reported in full in this paper along with additional forthcoming results of the study. All analyses will be completed by January 2013. Three figures and two tables are appended.

The purpose of this research is to study the long-run impacts (i.e. on educational attainment) of a freshman math intervention called "double-dose algebra". The intervention was conducted in 2003 and 2004 within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a large, poor urban school district. In response to low passing rates in 9th grade algebra, CPS launched the double-dose algebra policy for students entering high school in the fall of 2003. Instead of reinstating the traditional remedial courses from previous years, CPS required enrollment in two periods of algebra coursework for all first-time 9th graders testing below the national median on the math portion of the 8th grade Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS). Such students enrolled for two math credits, a full-year regular algebra class plus a full-year algebra support class. The authors follow two cohorts of students from the Chicago Public Schools from their freshman high school fall (in 2003 and 2004) through the end of high school and the beginning of college. The main analytic sample contains upwards of 11,000 students, 95% of whom are poor and black or Hispanic. Double-dosing increased the proportion of students earning at least a B in freshman algebra by 9.4 percentage points, a more than 65% increase from a base of 13.8 percentage points. Though passing rates for freshman algebra increased by 4.7 percentage points, the increase is statistically insignificant. Double-dosed students were also no more likely to pass geometry. Results show that math instruction was most successful for students with average math skills but relatively low reading skills, and not successful for the average treated student. This highlights the importance of carefully targeting such interventions to students most likely to benefit from them. Tables and figures are appended.

To understand heterogeneity in the effects of double-dose algebra across schools, the authors focus on two policy implementation features and their variation across schools. The first source of variation is the degree to which schools followed the cutoff-based course assignment policy. The second source of variation is the degree to which schools segregated algebra classes on the basis of students' prior skills in response to the policy. They ask the following research questions: (1) to what extent did double-dose algebra effects vary across schools?, and (2) how were these variations related to the ways in which schools implemented double-dose Algebra? (Contains 2 tables, 6 figures and 3 footnotes.)

This study is an efficacy trial funded by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Education Research (NCER). Fifteen CPS high schools are receiving funding to implement two Algebra I credit recovery courses during the summer sessions of 2011 and 2012--one online and one face-to-face (f2f). These courses allow students to recover a 1/2 credit of Algebra I. The study is designed to address a set of research questions that address the following specific aims: (1) To test the efficacy of online Algebra I for credit recovery, compared with standard f2f Algebra I for credit recovery; (2) To determine the supporting classroom conditions under which online Algebra I for credit recovery yields higher efficacy; (3) To gauge the extent to which credit recovery can help at-risk students get back on track, relative to students who passed Algebra I in 9th grade; and (4) To gauge the effects of expanding summer credit recovery options through online courses. In this paper, the authors will focus on the impact of taking online Algebra I for credit recovery on shortterm outcomes for the first cohort of ninth-graders. These include credit attainment in the course and scores on an end-of-course algebra test and on the PLAN assessment (a standardized pre-ACT taken in fall of grade 10). Over the course of this 4-year study, we will continue to follow the first cohort of students, as well as a second cohort, through high school to examine long-term effects on future test scores, course-taking and likelihood of dropout. (Contains 1 table.)

This study introduces a new set of weighting procedures for revealing the mediation mechanism in multi-level settings. These methods are illustrated through an investigation of whether the impact of a system-wide policy change on student outcomes is mediated by policy-induced peer composition change. When the policy changed not only lower-achieving students' course-taking but also the ability composition of math classes among other concurrent changes, unpacking the overall policy impact on math achievement is challenging. To illustrate, the causal questions focus on decomposing the total policy effect into the indirect effect mediated by peer composition change and the direct effect of the policy for the subpopulation of lower achieving students. Specifically, the authors ask: (1) Did the increase in peer ability mediate the policy effect on these students' math achievement? (2) Would the policy have a direct effect on these students' math achievement if their peer composition had remained unchanged by the policy? (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Credit recovery is one strategy to deal with high failure rates. The primary goal of credit recovery programs is to give students an opportunity to retake classes that they failed in an effort to get them back on track and keep them in school (Watson & Gemin, 2008). Most recently, as schools across the nation struggle to keep students on track and re-engage students who are off track, online learning has emerged as a promising and increasingly popular strategy for credit recovery: more than half of respondents from a national survey of administrators from 2,500 school districts reported using online learning in their schools for credit recovery, with just over a fifth (22%) reporting "wide use" of online learning for this purpose (Greaves & Hayes, 2008). Despite the growing use of online courses for credit recovery, the evidence base is thin. This paper describes the design and initial implementation of a randomized control trial that was designed to strengthen the evidence base surrounding online courses used for credit recovery. This study is testing: (1) the impact of online Algebra I for credit recovery against the standard face-to-face (f2f) version of the course and (2) the effects of offering expanded credit recovery options with online algebra, relative to business as usual (i.e., the summer programming that schools would offer in the absence of efforts to expand credit recovery). The setting will be Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools with freshman Algebra I failure rates of 20% or higher. The target students for this study are first-time freshmen who failed Algebra IB but passed the first semester. The study is first being implemented in summer 2011, and the authors will describe the study design and report on the implementation of the first summer cohort, including challenges and lesson learned from expanding access to credit recovery courses for at-risk students and conducting random assignment "on the spot" as students show up to take summer classes. The paper will also describe methods for measuring student participation and engagement in online courses, including interactions with online teachers, online students and in-class mentors.

A recent report by the Mathematics Advisory Panel referred to algebra as a "gateway" to later achievement (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). To address the problem of low academic performance in algebra, an increasing number of states and districts have started to implement a policy of requiring algebra for all students in ninth-grade or earlier. The rationale is that providing all students with an opportunity to learn algebra will likely improve math achievement across the board. However, the well-intended curricular policy may have unintended consequences for some students if the change of curricular offerings leads to a reorganization of all math classrooms in a school. To explain the negative effects of the policy that required algebra for all 9th grade students in Chicago Public Schools, the authors' causal questions focus on the mediating role of changes in peer ability composition induced by the policy. Specifically, the authors address the following research questions: (1) Did change in peer ability mediate the policy effects on student outcomes? (2) What would be the direct effects of the policy on student outcomes if schools did not change class composition? (3) Did the mediated effects (i.e., indirect effects) and the direct effects of the policy depend on the direction of change in peer ability for individual students? The analysis of pre-policy course-taking has shown that almost all 9th graders whose incoming math skills were higher than 0.5 standard deviations above the overall average took algebra in the absence of the policy. Hence the policy would not change these students' algebra enrollment. However, the results indicated that these same students would have experienced a decline in peer ability on average had they instead entered high school after 1997. Among students whose incoming math skills were no more than 0.5 standard deviations above the overall average, those who were more likely to take remedial math prior to the policy showed a higher likelihood of experiencing an increase in peer ability along with a change in course taking had they instead entered high school after 1997. The authors are currently conducting mediation analysis. References, and Tables and Figures are appended. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The purpose of this study is to understand how a policy that provided college-prep coursework for low-skill students may affect instructional organization within schools, and how such effects on instructional organization may have unintended consequences on academic outcomes of high-skill students who were not targeted by the policy. The author and her colleagues focus on a ninth-grade algebra-for-all policy implemented in Chicago public schools (CPS) and address two research questions; (1) to what extent did a policy that required algebra for all students in ninth grade affect classroom academic composition?; and (2) for high-skill students who were not targeted by the policy, how did the policy affect their academic outcomes? The results showed potential challenges of a curricular policy of expanding a college-prep curriculum to all students: schools are likely to detrack math classrooms when the policy merely required them to eliminate remedial coursework, and this resulted in lower peer ability levels for high-skill students. Consequently, their test scores suffered from this policy. This study suggests that simply mandating a college-prep curriculum for all students is not sufficient enough to improve academic outcomes of all students. An appendix presents: Statistical Models to estimate the effect of an algebra-for-all policy on students' academic outcomes among high-skill students. (Contains 3 tables and 11 figures.)

This study evaluates a curriculum policy that required college preparatory coursework for all students, using data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Beginning in 1997, CPS ended remedial coursework and required all students to complete a college-preparatory course sequence for graduation. In this study, the authors constrain their analysis to the effects of requiring students to begin high school taking Algebra, rather than remedial math. The authors examine changes in the extent to which students received credit in algebra in ninth grade, their ninth grade math grade, math test scores, and credits in higher-level math in later years. The study population consists of 11 cohorts of first-time 9th-grade students who enrolled in CPS high schools between 1994 and 2004. Changing requirements led to more students taking and receiving credit in rigorous-sounding courses, but grades suffered slightly and later course-work were unaffected. Thus, most of the benefits of the "College Prep for All" policy suggested by the extant research were unrealized in Chicago contexts. The authors offer several explanations for these disappointing results. First, prior research was limited in its applicability to a universal mandate and affected by selection bias. Second, the policy focused only on curricular content, but instructional quality and classroom climate may matter at least as much as content. Finally, content may matter little if students are not engaged in their coursework. Statistical Models are appended. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

In 2003, Chicago schools required students entering ninth grade with below-average math scores to take two periods of algebra. This led to higher test scores for students with both above- and below-average skills, yet failure rates increased for above-average students. We examine the mechanisms behind these surprising results. Sorting by incoming skills benefitted the test scores of high-skill students partially through higher demands and fewer disruptive peers. But more students failed because their skills were low relative to classroom peers. For below-average students, improvements in pedagogy and more time for learning offset problems associated with low-skill classrooms. In some cases, classrooms were not sorted, but below-average students took an extra support class simultaneously. Test scores also improved in such classes. (Contains 17 notes, 5 tables, and 1 figure.)