Check it yourself

Every source, with links

Nothing here is private data. Every figure in this piece comes from a file anyone can download or a dashboard anyone can open.

NC School Report Cards The public-facing view, school by school. After 2019 the Math 1 performance charts show almost no Level 5 and very little Level 4, and Levels 4 and 5 are combined into one “career and college ready” band, which is why most schools never noticed the change. A live dashboard, rebuilt each year: four pages were captured on 14 August 2026 and are archived in the document archive (opens in new tab), two middle schools, one high school and the district view. What they show is set out in Part nine. ncreports.ondemand.sas.com · archived captures in /docs/ NCDPI Accountability dashboards The department's own interactive views of performance, school performance grades and graduation rates. public.tableau.com (opens in new tab) Accountability data sets and reports The source files behind every chart here. The Assess-Ind Data Set tab carries the test-type codes: M1 high school Math 1, M1SEP 8th grade Math 1, M8SEP 8th grade Math EOG, MA07 7th grade math, ACTMA ACT mathematics. dpi.nc.gov (opens in new tab) Disaggregated performance data Grade-level results split by subject and student group. The statewide row is coded NC-SEA. accrpt.tops.ncsu.edu (opens in new tab) HB 986, Session Law 2018-32 The original. Part II adds G.S. 115C-81.36, advanced courses in grades three and higher, “a level five”. Section 2.(b): applies beginning with the 2018-2019 school year. archived copy · original at ncleg.gov (opens in new tab) SB 500, Session Law 2019-120 The amendment that matters. Courses narrowed to grades six and higher, elementary moved to “advanced learning opportunities” defined as gifted services, “a level five” changed to “the highest level”, and the annual report created. Ratified 28 June 2019, approved 11 July 2019. archived copy · original at ncleg.gov (opens in new tab) SB 507 (2025), pending Would extend the section to English Language Arts, carry the gifted definition across, add socioeconomic status to the report, and make the 7th-to-8th rule conditional on the school offering the course. Passed the Senate 46-0 in April 2025, still in House Rules. Not law. archived copy · original at ncleg.gov (opens in new tab) NC math graduation options chart The chart quoted in Part twelve is the 16 February 2017 version, policy GCS-N-004, headed “Effective for Freshmen Entering High School in 2012-2013 and BEYOND”, which carries the four columns, the CTE pairs and the footnote that four math credits need not include a fourth level math. Linked here is the April 2019 revision. The option headed “Admission into a Community College or Technical School” lists the CTE courses and CTE pairs that count as a math credit, and prints above it the warning that those options do not meet the community college system's own Multiple Measures Policy. The four-column version quoted in Part twelve is the 16 February 2017 chart. archived copy · original at content.govdelivery.com (opens in new tab) Counted Out, May 2017 Joseph Neff, Ann Doss Helms and David Raynor, News & Observer and Charlotte Observer. Seven years of student-level state data, tracked by unique ID. The series hub, with all three parts and the methodology note. newsobserver.com (opens in new tab) The 2019 standard setting North Carolina General Education Mathematics Assessments Standard Setting 2019, Final Technical Report, Data Recognition Corporation for NC DPI, September 2019, 366 pages. Table 1, “Cut Scores and Associated Impact Data”, is the projection reproduced in Part nine. The report is under copyright, so it is cited here rather than reproduced. DPI's technical information pages are the place to request it. dpi.nc.gov (opens in new tab) The CCRG evaluation, in full Johnson, J. and Cutler-White, C., A Report of the Career and College Ready Graduates Pilot Implementation in GEAR UP NC High Schools, Edstar Inc. and GEAR UP NC, September 2019. Every figure in Part thirteen comes from here: the participation data, the RISE tier completion table, the advising findings and the teacher comments. 37 pages. Edstar Analytics (opens in new tab) The Algebra Gatekeepers The essay this piece grew out of, on Education Progress. The narrative account of what the EVAAS work found, how it was validated, and what happened to it. educationprogress.org (opens in new tab) Broaden Successful Participation in Advanced Courses A separate annual report to the General Assembly under G.S. 115C-174.26. Its Table 1 is the only place the state publishes enrolment counts course by course for Advanced Placement, which is where the AP Calculus figures in Part four come from. It does not mention the mathematics placement statute and does not connect enrolment to when a student took Algebra. ncleg.gov (opens in new tab) Haynie, E&R Report 08.31 Glenda Haynie, High School Mathematics Course-Taking Patterns of Middle School Algebra I Students, Wake County Public School System Evaluation and Research Department, February 2009. The source of the finding that honors math was open and almost nobody entered it late, and that none of those who did took calculus. archived copy · original at wcpss.net (opens in new tab) REL 2017-177, credit recovery Stallings and colleagues, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast. Table 2 counts NC course repetitions after a failed first attempt, 2008‑09 to 2011‑12, spanning the arrival of the first Future-Ready Core cohort. archived copy · original at ies.ed.gov (opens in new tab) SB 1532 (2007), never enacted Would have barred the State Board from implementing the Future-Ready Core until the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee studied its “unintended consequences”. Re-referred to committee in May 2007. The study was never done. archived copy · original at ncleg.net (opens in new tab) Current graduation requirements DPI's own page, including the 2026‑27 cohort table with the new computer science credit and electives cut from six to five, and the note that a fourth-level mathematics course is required for UNC minimum requirements. archived copy · original at dpi.nc.gov (opens in new tab) RISE, the early evidence EdNC's reporting on the first-year results, including the finding that students below a 2.2 unweighted GPA completed college-level math and English at lower rates at the pilot colleges. In May 2021 the community college presidents voted to stop the statewide rollout. ednc.org (opens in new tab) Career and College Ready Graduates Session Law 2015-241, Section 10.13, and the March 2017 progress report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee. The report describes an implementation plan; it carries no outcome data. archived copy · original at ncleg.gov (opens in new tab) California SB 359 (2015) The California Mathematics Placement Act. Multiple objective measures, an annual review of placement data for disproportionality, a first-month checkpoint, a route to challenge a placement, and a published policy. leginfo.legislature.ca.gov (opens in new tab)
M1 and M1SEP. The state files report the Math 1 exam as two separate populations. M1SEP is the exam sat by eighth graders accelerated into the course; M1 is the same exam sat in high school, normally in ninth grade. They are different students in different years and must never be added together without saying so. Where this site gives a single Math 1 figure it is M1, the high school population, unless it says otherwise.

Works cited

Grouped by what each source is about. Where a study's design matters to how its result should be read, that is noted underneath rather than argued here; the discussion is in the research aside and in the natural experiment.

Algebra acceleration and expanded enrolment

  • Allensworth, E., Nomi, T., Montgomery, N. and Lee, V. E. “College Preparatory Curriculum for All: Academic Consequences of Requiring Algebra and English I for Ninth Graders in Chicago.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31(4), 2009, 367-391.
  • Clotfelter, C. T., Ladd, H. F. and Vigdor, J. L. “The Aftermath of Accelerating Algebra: Evidence from District Policy Initiatives.” Journal of Human Resources 50(1), 2015, 159-188. Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Guilford County. Difference-in-differences with instrumental variables, not a regression discontinuity.
  • Domina, T., McEachin, A., Penner, A. and Penner, E. “Aiming High and Falling Short: California's Eighth-Grade Algebra-for-All Effort.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 37(3), 2015, 275-295. District-level panel.
  • Nomi, T. “The Unintended Consequences of an Algebra-for-All Policy on High-Skill Students.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 34(4), 2012, 489-505.

Placement design, screening and discretion

  • Card, D. and Giuliano, L. “Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students?” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 20453, 2014.
  • Card, D. and Giuliano, L. “Universal Screening Increases the Representation of Low-Income and Minority Students in Gifted Education.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(48), 2016, 13678-13683.
  • Dougherty, S. M., Goodman, J. S., Hill, D. V., Litke, E. G. and Page, L. C. “Middle School Math Acceleration and Equitable Access to Eighth-Grade Algebra: Evidence from the Wake County Public School System.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 37(1 suppl), 2015, 80S-101S.
  • Grissom, J. A. and Redding, C. “Discretion and Disproportionality: Explaining the Underrepresentation of High-Achieving Students of Color in Gifted Programs.” AERA Open 2(1), 2016.
  • McEachin, A., Domina, T. and Penner, A. M. “Heterogeneous Effects of Early Algebra Across California Middle Schools.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2020. Multi-site fuzzy regression discontinuity across 510 schools.
  • Plucker, J. A., Berg, B. and Kuwayama, H. Automatic Enrollment in Advanced Courses. Johns Hopkins School of Education, 2024.

Method

  • Cattaneo, M. D., Keele, L., Titiunik, R. and Vazquez-Bare, G. “Extrapolating Treatment Effects in Multi-Cutoff Regression Discontinuity Designs.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 116(536), 2021, 1941-1952. The source of the point that a discontinuity estimate is identified only near the cutoff.

Access at equal measured achievement

  • Faulkner, V. N., Stiff, L. V., Marshall, P. L., Nietfeld, J. and Crossland, C. L. “Race and Teacher Evaluations as Predictors of Algebra Placement.” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 45(3), 2014, 288-311.
  • Francis, D. V., de Oliveira, A. C. M. and Dimmitt, C. “Do School Counselors Exhibit Bias in Recommending Students for Advanced Coursework?” B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 19(4), 2019.
  • Johnson, J. L., Campbell, B., Lewis, R., Johnson, J., Redington, M. and Gaal, A. North Carolina's School Counseling Program Review: A Statewide Survey and Comprehensive Assessment. Raleigh, N.C.: Edstar, Inc., 2005. The statewide counsellor survey on free and reduced lunch status and race, as quoted in Stiff, Johnson and Akos (2011), p. 64.
  • Oakes, J., Selvin, M., Karoly, L. and Guiton, G. Educational Matchmaking: Academic and Vocational Tracking in Comprehensive High Schools. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, R-4189-NSF/PC, 1992, Table 5.10.
  • Stiff, L. V. and Johnson, J. L. “Mathematical Reasoning and Sense Making Begins with the Opportunity to Learn.” Chapter 5 in Strutchens, M. E. and Quander, J. R. (eds), Focus in High School Mathematics: Fostering Reasoning and Sense Making for All Students. Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2011, from p. 85. The 103 overlooked sixth graders placed in the top track with no additional interventions, and what happened the year after the principal was reassigned, in the natural experiment. NCTM copyright; cited and quoted, not hosted.
  • Stiff, L. V., Johnson, J. L. and Akos, P. “Examining What We Know for Sure: Tracking in Middle Grades Mathematics.” Chapter 6 in Tate, W. F., King, K. D. and Rousseau Anderson, C. (eds), Disrupting Tradition: Research and Practice Pathways in Mathematics Education. Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2011, 63-75. Tables 6.1, 6.2 and 6.4 and Figure 6.1. The source for the fifth grade recommendation timing, the absence of districtwide criteria, the recommendation rates a year apart, the parent waivers and the section-capacity finding.
  • Stone, C. B. “Leveling the Playing Field: An Urban School System Examines Equity in Access to Mathematics Curriculum.” The Urban Review 30(4), 1998, 295-307. The three-times figure as such is quoted from Stone, C. B. and Turba, R., Journal of Technology in Counseling 1(1), 1999, summarising that study.

North Carolina documents, data and evaluation

  • Johnson, J. and Cutler-White, C. A Report of the Career and College Ready Graduates Pilot Implementation in GEAR UP NC High Schools. Edstar Inc. and GEAR UP NC, September 2019. Hosted copy (opens in new tab).
  • Johnson, J. and Cutler-White, C. GEAR UP NC Annual Performance Report and the GEAR UP NC Tower of Hope district and school reports. Edstar Inc., 2014-2018. The Minimum Admission Requirements and Multiple Measures analysis.
  • NC Community College System. 2025 Performance Measures for Student Success, Fall 2021 cohort; and Student Success Initiative Report for Fiscal Year 2024-2025.
  • NC Department of Public Instruction. EVAAS Longitudinal Database, as reproduced in the 2009 analysis by SAS Institute commissioned by the NC Association of School Administrators.
  • NC Department of Public Instruction. Report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee on Advanced Courses in Mathematics, December 2024.
  • NC Department of Public Instruction. Supporting the Implementation of HB 986. April 2019. Slides 8 and 9 are reproduced in Part seven.
  • University of California San Diego. Senate Administration Workgroup on Admissions, November 2025.

Financial aid, remediation cost and time to degree

  • 34 CFR 668.20, and the Federal Student Aid Handbook, Volume 1 Chapter 1 and Volume 7 Chapter 8.
  • Douglas, D., Logue, A. W. and Watanabe-Rose, M. “The Long-Term Impacts of Corequisite Mathematics Remediation with Statistics.” Educational Researcher 52(1), 2023.
  • Education Reform Now. Out of Pocket: The High Cost of Inadequate High Schools and High School Student Achievement on College Affordability. 2016.

Journalism

  • Neff, J., Helms, A. D. and Raynor, D. Counted Out. News & Observer and Charlotte Observer, May 2017.

The 52% figure for 2013 graduates entering a North Carolina community college is the General Assembly's own finding, recorded in Session Law 2015-241 and quoted in the CCRG evaluation above.