But when district leaders examined what these courses truly accomplished, they realized they held kids back, keeping them from higher-level math. 

So one by one, starting in 2014, this 15,000-student school system an hour southeast of Washington D.C., began eliminating lower-level math courses. The last one to go, intermediate algebra, was pulled in 2021. 

Calvert County school leaders have observed significant gains in math in the past two decades: nearly 100% of their students successfully completed the more challenging Algebra II in 2025 compared to just 67% in 2006. 

The advancement was even more pronounced among Black students: 99% did the same last year compared to 51% 20 years ago. Kids with disabilities also saw dramatic improvements as 94% completed the course in 2025 compared to 20% in 2006.  

Joe Sutton, Calvert County schools’ supervisor of secondary mathematics and the force behind the elimination of these lower-level classes, said the move was overdue. 

“We couldn’t find any evidence these courses were increasing students’ subsequent grades, their graduation rates or their state test passing scores,” he said. “After two or three, we started to recognize this is a pattern: Erring on the side of caution ended up underpreparing our students — particularly those from historically underserved groups.”

The decision meant more students were exposed to higher-level math. 

Ninety-nine percent of seniors completed courses in 2025 that were recognized by the University System of Maryland as rigorous for 12th graders, up from 40% in 2006. This included honors precalculus, advanced mathematics, and Advanced Placement Statistics, a college-level-course. Once again, gains were further pronounced among historically marginalized groups: A full 98% of Black students did the same compared to 22% in 2006. Ninety-four percent of students with disabilities achieved that outcome in 2025 compared to 0% 19 years earlier.

Though it wasn’t a direct replacement, statistics and advanced mathematics have largely taken the place of business math, Algebra III and academic precalculus, Sutton said. 

The elimination of remedial or intermediate courses meant students and their teachers had to reach a higher standard. Professional development helped educators meet the academic needs of every child, including those who might struggle mightily with the material, Sutton said. And the district invited kids to lunchtime and after-school tutoring as needed.

Just as important: Staff had to abandon the earlier practices that underestimated kids’ potential, he said, and stymied their ability. They had to take a close and critical look at access.

It wasn’t an easy shift. Sutton spent years battling teachers and counselors who thought he was taking the district in the wrong direction by doing away with the more basic courses.

“I had to spend some of my social capital in order to get to where we are because it did make things harder for teachers — especially upfront,” Sutton said, knowing he would be adding more students to their classes who couldn’t instantly graph a line or solve a multi-step equation. “But just by virtue of being in that course, they’re going to grow more and we’re going to do more good for our community.”

Sutton, who founded one of the courses he later removed, intermediate algebra, admitted he didn’t do the best job of selling his approach initially. 

“In the first few years, there was just concern, a lack of faith in what we were doing,” he said. “For a while, any time a high school teacher saw me walking in the hallway, the one thing they wanted to talk about is, ‘We really shouldn’t have gotten rid of that course.’”

Andrew Brantlinger, associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy, and Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park, knew Sutton faced a tough challenge and commended him for sticking with it. 

“The call to eliminate these kinds of classes is not new,” Brantlinger said, “but that a district leader would do it — I don’t know how often that really happens.”

He said schools around the country have been de-tracking classes since the ’80s, as working-class students were attending college at higher rates and needed access to more advanced mathematics than earlier generations had been given.

Brantlinger notes that the influential has been a major player in the movement to remove such courses, which he calls “low track” or “terminal.” 

A 2024 of below grade-level 9th graders found those enrolled in mixed-level Algebra I classes — led by properly trained teachers — did substantially better on 11th-grade math tests compared to peers placed into a remedial course.

Such measures, researchers discovered, increased attendance plus the likelihood of the student staying in the district all four years — and completing college-ready math while there. Also, they note, there was no evidence of a negative effect on higher-performing kids in the mixed group.

On the local level, Sutton said, it meant a change in how Calvert County kids advanced through the subject from year to year.  

“Course placement recommendations were based entirely on what students had accomplished in the past,” he said. “And now we’re at a point where course recommendations are based on what a student wants to accomplish in their future. It’s a really big paradigm shift, and it was really concerning for a lot of stakeholders.”

Sutton said the school district counsels kids about their academic and professional goals each February. It’s at that point that they determine what type of courses they’ll need to succeed. 

Algebra I is now the “lowest” level class offered at the high school. And if kids need support, Sutton said, the district offers a semester- or year-long Algebra Lab course they can take concurrently with Algebra I to get extra practice.

Casie Reynolds, a math teacher who joined the school district in 2005, once taught a small intermediate algebra course composed mostly of Black students who were classified as special education and had an Individualized Education Program or had a learning difficulty that required some type of accommodation. It was not representative of the overall population and didn’t push kids to their fullest potential, Reynolds said. Students from those same groups were placed in Algebra II or some other, rigorous course, in the ensuing years. 

“Students were never given the opportunity to achieve in more rigorous math classes because they couldn’t get there due to teachers’ and counselors’ mindsets and beliefs,” she said. “I view it as a self-fulfilling prophecy: believe they can or can’t, and they will or they won’t.  It’s hard to say they couldn’t do the math before because they were never invited to.”

David Kung, executive director of , who lauded the change in Calvert County, said too many students are shunted into dead-end courses. 

“Districts — like many people — have bought into the myth that success in math is primarily about natural ability,” Kung said. “If that’s your belief and you see someone struggling (you think) they just don’t belong in that class.”

Sutton said the switch has pulled kids off a predictable path of pre-algebra, Algebra 1A, Algebra 1B and geometry, the minimal level courses they needed to graduate. Now, that  student might take Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II and statistics. 

“So, they’re still not making it to calculus,” he said. “But that experience is so much more postsecondary preparation than what they had been doing when we had all these options to steer them around rigor, out of best intentions.”