The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) adopted a detracking initiative in the 2014–15 school year, eliminating accelerated middle and high school math classes, including the option for advanced students to take Algebra I in eighth grade. The policy stands today. High schools feature a common math sequence of heterogeneously-grouped classes studying Algebra I in ninth grade and Geometry in tenth grade. After tenth grade, students are allowed to take math courses reflecting different abilities and interests.

Implementing the Common Core was provided as the impetus for the change. When first proposed, district officials summed up the reform as, “There would no longer be honors or gifted mathematics classes, and there would no longer be Algebra I in eighth grade due to the Common Core State Standards in 8th grade.” Parents received a flyer from the district reinforcing this message, explaining, “The Common Core State Standards in Math (CCSS-M) require a change in the course sequence for mathematics in grades 6–12.” Phi Daro, one of Common Core’s coauthors, served as a consultant to the district on both the design and political strategy of the detracking plan.

The policy was controversial from the start. Parents showed up in community meetings to voice opposition, and a petition urging the district to reverse the change began circulating. District officials launched a public relations campaign to justify the policy. Focused on the goal of greater equity, that campaign continues today. SFUSD declared detracking a great success, claiming that the graduating class of 2018–19, the first graduating class affected by the policy when in eighth grade, saw a drop in algebra 1 repeat rates from 40 percent to 8 percent and that, compared to the previous year, about 10 percent more students in the class took math courses beyond Algebra II. Moreover, the district reported enrollment gains by Black and Hispanic students in advanced courses.

Important publications applauded SFUSD and congratulated the district on the early evidence of success. Education Week ran a story in 2018, “A Bold Effort to End Tracking in Algebra Shows Promise,” that described the reforms with these words: “Part of an ambitious project to end the relentless assignment of underserved students into lower-level math, the city ​​now requires all students to take math courses of equal rigor through geometry, in classrooms that are no longer segregated by ability.” The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) issued a policy brief depicting the detracking effort as a model for the country. Omitted from these reviews was the fact that the “lower-level math” to which non-algebra eighth-graders were assigned was Common Core Eighth Grade Math, which SFUSD and NCTM had spent a decade depicting as a rigorous math course, as they do currently.

Jo Boaler, noted math reformer, professor at Stanford, and critic of tracking, teamed up with Alan Schoenfeld, Phil Daro and others to write “How One City Got Math Right” for The Hechinger Report, and Boaler and Schoenfeld published an op-ed , “New Math Pays Dividends for SF Schools” in the San Francisco Chronicle.

In this public relations campaign, there was no mention of math achievement or test scores. Course enrollments and passing grades were presented as meaningful measures by which to measure the success of detracking.

They are bad measures. Course enrollments are a means to an end—student learning—not an end unto themselves. If a district enrolls students in courses that fail to teach important content, nothing has been accomplished. Boosting enrollment in advanced courses, therefore, is of limited value.[1] It’s also a statistic, along with grades, that is easily manipulated. No matter the school district, if word spreads that the superintendent would like to see more kids enrolled in higher math classes and fewer D and F grades in those classes, enrollments will go up and the number of D’s and F’s will go down.

Families for San Francisco

Families for San Francisco, a parent advocacy group, acquired data from the district under the California Public Records Act (the state’s version of the Freedom of Information Act). The group’s analysis calls into question the district’s assertions. As mentioned previously, repeat rates for Algebra I dropped sharply after the elimination of Algebra I in eighth grade, but whether the reform had anything to do with that is questionable. The falling repeat rate occurred after the district changed the rules for passing the course, eliminating a requirement that students pass a state-designed end of course exam in Algebra I before gaining placement in Geometry. In a presentation prepared by the district, speaker notes to the relevant slide admit, “The drop from 40 percent of students repeating Algebra 1 to 8 percent of students repeating Algebra 1, we saw as a one-time major drop due to both the change in course sequence and the change in placement policy.”

The claim that more students were taking “advanced math” classes (defined here as beyond Algebra II) also deserves scrutiny. Enrollment in calculus courses declined post-reform. The claim rests on a “compression” course the district offers, combining Algebra II and precalculus into a single-year course. The Families for San Francisco analysis shows that once the enrollment figures for the compression course are excluded, the enrollment gains evaporate. Why should they be excluded? The University of California rejected the district’s classification of the compression course as “advanced math,” primarily because the course topics fall short of content specifications for precalculus.

Smarter balanced scores

The conventional way to measure achievement gaps—and progress towards closing them—is with scores on achievement tests. California students take the Smarter Balanced assessments in grades three through eight and in grade eleven. Following SFUSD’s analytical strategy, let’s compare scores from 2015, the last cohort of eleventh-graders under the previous policy, and 2019, the last cohort with pre-pandemic test scores.[2] Please be alerted, however, that both analyses, SFUSD’s and the one presented here, fall far short of supporting causal claims. The purpose of the current analysis is to illustrate that SFUSD’s public relations campaign omitted crucial information to determine what’s going on.

As displayed in Table 1, SFUSD’s scores for eleventh-grade mathematics remained flat from 2015 (scale score of 2611) to 2019 (scale score of 2610), moving only a single point. Table 1 shows the breakdown by racial and ethnic groups. Black students made a small gain (+2), Hispanic scores declined (-14), White students gained (+17), and Asian students registered the largest gains (+22).

Table 1. San Francisco Unified School District Smarter Balanced Scores, grade 11, 2015–19

Table 2 offers some context for interpreting the scores. Smarter Balanced is vertically scaled so that scores can be compared across grades. On Smarter Balanced results from twelve states, the mean fifth-grade math score was 2498, well above the 2479 score for eleventh-grade Black students in SFUSD and the same as the 2498 score registered by eleventh-grade Hispanics students.[3] The mean Smarter Balanced sixth-grade score was 2515, well above the scores of both groups of eleventh graders in SFUSD.

Table 2. 2019 Smarter Balanced summative assessment scores, mathematics, by grade

Summing up: Black and Hispanic eleventh-graders in San Francisco score about the same as or lower than the typical fifth-grader who took the same math test. Black eleventh graders fall just short of the threshold for being considered proficient in fourth-grade math and well below the cut point for demonstrating fifth-grade proficiency. The situation is appalling.

Are test score gaps narrowing?

Contrary to the district’s spin, the trend towards greater equity is not headed in the right direction. Gaps are widening. Perhaps this trend is statewide and not just a SFUSD phenomenon.

Table 3 supplies the gap calculations from the data above in Table 1, along with a comparison to statewide trends. For example, at the state level, the eleventh-grade Black-White gap grew by 11 points—from 94 to 105—while in SFUSD, the gap expanded by 15 points (from 143 to 158). The Hispanic-White gap provides a more dramatic contrast. The state level gap grew by only 5 points, but in San Francisco, it expanded by a whopping 31 points. Glancing back at Table 2 again will provide context. The 31-point expansion is larger than the 20-point difference in mean scores for Smarter Balanced’s eighth-grade and high school assessments. That’s a big change.

With both gaps, SFUSD evidenced greater inequities than state averages in 2015, and that relative underperformance worsened by 2019. The district’s anti-tracking public relations campaign, by focusing on metrics such as grades and course enrollments, diverts attention from the harsh reality that SFUSD is headed in the wrong direction on equity.

Table 3. Black-White and Hispanic-White gap, grades 11, California and San Francisco, 2015–19, by Smarter Balanced scale scores, mathematics

Could the situation be even worse?

Finally, as bad as the preceding data look, the reality of the district’s poor math achievement is probably worse. SFUSD has exceptionally low rates of test participation on the state test, especially among Black and Hispanic students. Don’t forget: This is the test that state and district officials use for accountability purposes. Participation is mandated by both federal and state law. If the students who don’t take the test tend to be low achievers—usually a fair assumption—the district’s test score performance could fall even lower once those students are included.

Table 4. 11th-grade students tested as a percentage of students enrolled

Conclusion

San Francisco Unified School District embarked on a detracking initiative in 2015, followed by an extensive public relations campaign to portray the policy as having successfully narrowed achievement gaps. The campaign omitted assessment data indicating that the Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gaps have widened, not narrowed, the exact opposite of the district’s intention and of the story the district was selling to the public. Only SFUSD possesses the data needed to conduct a formal evaluation that would credibly identify the causal factors producing such dismal results.

Whether detracking can assist in the quest for greater equity is an open question. It could, in fact, exacerbate inequities by favoring high achieving children from upper-income families—who can afford private sector workarounds—or with parents savvy enough to negotiate the bureaucratic hurdles SFUSD has erected to impede acceleration. As I have written elsewhere, the voluminous literature on tracking is better at describing problems than in solving them. The evidence that detracking promotes equity is sparse, mostly drawing on case studies that are restricted in terms of generalizability of findings to other settings and with research designs that do not support causal inferences.

If SFUSD would now approach tracking with an open mind, officials need not look far to discover equitable possibilities. Across the bay, David Card, a scholar at University of California, Berkeley, won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics for his research applying innovative econometrics to thorny public policy problems. Card’s recent studies, conducted with colleague Laura Giuliano, investigate tracking. In 2014, Card and Giuliano published a paper evaluating an urban district’s tracking program based on prior achievement. In particular, disadvantaged students and students of color benefitted from an accelerated curriculum, with no negative spillover effects for students pursuing the regular course of study. Card and Giuliano concluded, “Our findings suggest that a comprehensive tracking program that establishes a separate classroom in every school for the top‐performing students could significantly boost the performance of the most talented students in even the poorest neighborhoods, at little or no cost to other students or the District’s budget.”

Card and Giuliano’s current project studies two large urban districts in Florida, predominantly Black and Hispanic, that provide mathematically talented students with the opportunity to accelerate through middle school math courses. When these students enter high school, they will have already completed Algebra I and Geometry. They begin high school two years ahead of students in San Francisco, opening up greater opportunities to take Advanced Placement (AP) courses in later years.

Which system is more equitable?

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It’s no secret that much of San Francisco’s trash – especially in neighborhoods like Mission, Tenderloin, and Mission Dolores – ends up on the sidewalks.

Christine, an owner who lives on 21st Street near Mission Street, was outside her house one morning picking up bits and pieces armed with pliers with a pliers-armed grasping tool. “In an ideal world, people would have to deposit their rubbish somewhere,” she says.

Christine has garbage bags, metal garbage collectors, and gloves ready to pick up garbage that has been left in front of her home on the mission. She says if she picks up the trash herself, it is less likely to attract further dumping. But if she sees feces on the street, she’ll report it. Photo by Clara-Sophia Daly.

But in San Francisco, this place was on the sidewalk or on the steps of Christine’s property, where she regularly cleaned up trash – sometimes she had to call the city’s 311 hotline for human feces and diarrhea.

Angel Mayorga, a 63-year-old resident who lived in the Mission his entire life, frequently uses the 311 application on his iPhone to send notices to the San Francisco Public Works. You clean up, but the problem remains. “Clean streets and cleanliness are a basic human need,” Mayorga said. “It’s going to be disgusting.”

But it’s not just human feces that residents always call to clean up, it’s everyday trash – cans, old meals, food packaging – the kind of trash residents would normally throw in a jar.

A public works clerk loads trash left on the sidewalk into his truck at the mission. Photo by Clara-Sophia Daly.

The Mission and San Francisco used to have what most cities have: ubiquitous public garbage cans. But in 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom decided that the best way to reduce garbage in San Francisco is to get rid of trash cans.

Ross Mirkarimi, former sheriff and supervisor of District 5, recalled a meeting with then Mayor Gavin Newsom and other senior officials. According to Mirkarimi, city guides believed that “trash cans become a magnet for more rubbish that goes beyond the can. They believed that cans become a marker for people to unload what they wanted.”

“I wasn’t in favor of taking away trash cans,” says Mirkarimi. “I didn’t find it intuitive, but the administration so insisted that this was an experiment we had to try.”

And they did. Around 1,500 trash cans were pulled from the streets of the city.

Nowadays, residents routinely walk several blocks before running into a trash can. On the way you can see to-go containers, paper bags, masks, gloves and other rubbish from other pedestrians who have simply given up trying to find a trash can. And that’s no wonder.

In 2007 the city had 4,500 trash cans. We now have 3,113 public trash cans – 1,500 fewer than 14 years ago.

And when compared to other cities, 4,500 doses added up to very few for a 47 square mile city. 3,113 even less. Manhattan, for example, has three times the number of trash cans – 9,144 – to cover its 23 square miles, according to the New York City Sanitation Department.

In contrast, the abundance of trash cans in Manhattan is easy to spot. Go everywhere and almost every corner has a trash can. In San Francisco, go with the trash in hand and keep walking. Anyone who has a dog knows that you have to walk at least a few blocks to find a garbage can.

Although the idea of ​​ridding a city of public garbage cans in order to clean them up doesn’t sound intuitive, it is based on the idea that when a city has many public garbage cans, people take advantage of them and for illegal dumping of household or business waste use. Other cities have come to the same conclusion.

In fact, New York City dumped 223 trash cans in Harlem in 2008 when officials decided the trash cans were attracting dumping. This experiment was also unsuccessful. Removing the baskets did not “significantly reduce litter,” according to the NYC Department of Sanitation.

The failure of Newsom’s plan to solve the city’s garbage problem has not gone unnoticed.

Experiment on the trash can for public works from 2017

In April 2017, Public Works, in collaboration with Mayor Ed Lee and District Supervisor Hillary Ronen, installed 38 new trash cans along the Mission Street corridor between 14th and Cesar Chavez streets. The aptly named “Yes We Can” pilot program in the Mission District was a direct response to the idea that more bins could mean less rubbish on the sidewalk and on the streets.

At the time, promises were made to see if “the extra considerations lead to less garbage and fewer complaints” until 311, which launched in 2008.

Public Works Spokeswoman Rachel Gordon examined the service request 12 months before the new cans and 12 months after and said, “We have seen more calls for overflowing cans, but we haven’t seen noticeably more complaints for garbage-related services . “

There is no data on calls for overflowing cans, but during the trial period the service calls for the scatter patrol increased from an average of 77 per month to 74 per month and the service calls for illegal dumping increased went from 70 per month to 61 per month according to the program.

Public Works’ Gordon believes the 38 new bins are still there.

Currently, San Francisco still has that 3,113 public trash cans left after Newsom’s plan went into effect, compared to 5,000 in 2007. Recology says the trash cans along 24th Street, Mission Street and Cesar Chavez are serviced at least twice a day, seven days a week.

Gordon says that if district overseers want more cans, they’ll add more so long as the cans “don’t cause more problems than they help”.

Supervisor Ronen said, “For starters, we need more bins outside of each of our parks – Garfield, Jose Coronado, Parque Ninos Unidos.” She added that she has “advocated more and better trash cans for District 9 for years.”
Indeed, San Francisco is in the process of choosing from a range of new designs.

For now, some say the trash cans in San Francisco are easy to search (for both rodents and humans) and difficult to tell whether or not they are for trash or recycling.

Honey Mahogany, a legal advisor to Supervisor Matt Haney, called the current cans “renaissance trash cans,” meaning they’re easy to abuse, and said they were picked by former public works director Mohammed Nuru, though he was told that they were ineffective by some superiors, including Mirkarimi, according to him.

Reporting of garbage and garbage to public works by 311

Tracking the amount of trash on the sidewalk in San Francisco is made possible by data from 311, a phone number, and now an app that residents can use to report trash on the streets of San Francisco.

The service launched in 2008, a year after Newsom got rid of 1,500 trash cans. So there are no comparisons before and after. Mayor Ed Lee introduced the 311 app in August 2013.

In the past five years, Mission Dolores had the second highest number of garbage complaints, adjusted for population size. Mission comes third, and fillet comes first because it has the most complaints about junk.

In 2019, the Mission had the second highest volume of 311 faecal removal calls with 14 percent of citywide inquiries or a total of 3,942 service calls. The demand for overfilled containers rose last year to 1,613 – and thus took third place in calls via trash cans.

If the garbage ends up on the sidewalk, residents call or file a report on 311 and the public works department crews pick up the garbage.

Fewer bins and bigger budgets for Recology and the Public Works Department

Although the city’s population has increased by a little more than 10 Percent since Newsom’s 2007 plan went into effect and the city has 1,500 fewer public bins. Even so, according to Recology spokesman Robert Reed, Recology’s budget has “increased by more than a third to more than $ 22 million a year”.

As for the public works department, which picks up street litter on the 311 calls, crews, which include workers, truck drivers and supervisors, have increased 25 percent over the past five years to 349.

Gordon said the goal is to respond to street cleaning requests within 48 hours. 24 hours for human / animal waste. “Public Works achieved that goal for 91.4 percent of inquiries, she said.

But much of the rubbish is not reported and remains on the street.

Anthony, a public works worker who picked up trash on Bartlett Street at Mission, said he was struggling to keep up with requests.

“Right now I’m backed up … still trying to catch up from two days ago and we have one thing in town where we should get it done in a certain time, so I’m just trying to do what I do can do to get it done. “

Paul Monge, an aide to Supervisor Ronen, referred to Proposal B, which 61 percent of voters approved in November, with no additional bins or crews.

No trash cans or garbage crews will be added, but it will provide oversight of the Public Works Department, and it will also create a new Sanitation and Roads Department in 2022 and a five-person Sanitary and Roads Commission to help them monitor.

Until then, the superiors appease their voters with different solutions.

Mahogany, who helped write Proposition B, says Haney used adback money, or money found through the town’s regular budget process granted to the community, to clean up the streets around the Tenderloin and Civic Center where excessive garbage hurt small businesses.

“Our office has taken the cleaning of the district into its own hands and has spent funds on street cleaning, invested more directly in cleaning and passed an ordinance making public bathrooms nearby [homeless] Warehouse. ”

“As a city, we do not invest in maintaining streets, and it is mainly people of color in urban areas who are affected by DPW who do not take responsibility for cleaning the sidewalks.”

Mission residents like Francesca Pastine, who has lived in the mission since 1994 and in San Francisco since 1976, regularly send Ronen’s office emails with photos of the littered streets.

She would like to see public works take on more responsibility and work proactively to clean up rubbish.

Gordon of Public Works says, “But we also need to focus on why roads are destroyed in the first place.”

She blames San Francisco residents for sloppy thinking and unconcern. She tries to confront this with public awareness campaigns in schools and elsewhere. But education has not worked so far.

Mirkarimi agrees that it’s up to the residents. “If there is no kind of accountability for social and personal responsibility to work,” the city will not be cleaned up.

Photo by Lydia Chavez

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