Philly schools are offering to pay students to retake state algebra exams they failed

The Philadelphia School District wants high school students who failed their state algebra tests to retake them in an attempt to pass — and is offering a cash incentive for those who do.

Deputy Superintendent Jerome Dawson confirmed the incentive program, which will begin in February, but declined to say how much the stipend will be.

“It is not significant; it is a token,” Dawson said in an interview. The money will come not from the district’s operating budget but from the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, the district’s nonprofit arm.

Up to 500 students will be offered the chance to take an eight-week algebra refresher course at their high schools, then sit again for the algebra Keystone exam in May. A virtual class option may also be developed.

“It will be based where the need is,” Dawson said.

The unconventional move comes because, Dawson said, “algebra is our Achilles’ heel.” District students have shown growth in academic achievement in most subject areas since Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. arrived in Philadelphia in 2022 — but algebra scores have dipped.

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Fewer than one-third of all city students — 27.2% — passed the algebra Keystone test by 11th grade in the 2023-24 school year, down from 30.1% the previous year, and down significantly from the school system’s all-time high, 38.4% in 2017-18. Keystones are typically taken in the spring.

“Algebra is a place that we’re not getting better,” Watlington said at a school board progress monitoring session last week. “We just have not gotten better.”

Pennsylvania allows students who fail the Keystones to retake them through the end of 11th grade, but the number of Philadelphia students who actually sit for a retest is “very, very small,” Dawson said, “because they were not given an additional opportunity to get some focus on the skills that they struggle with in algebra.”

In all, there are about 8,000 11th graders in the district; 300 to 500 — about 20% of those who failed Keystones — will be offered the incentive program, Dawson said. (Only those who are offered the incentive will be able to take advantage of the course.)

Letters are now being sent to students who failed the algebra Keystone tests and are eligible to retake them. Those students will be invited to the eight-week course taught by district teachers with a “demonstrated track record of success” before and after school and on Saturdays.

Algebra I is a “gateway course,” said Dawson, a former math teacher — important because it prepares students for higher-level math classes but also because it requires students to use higher-level thinking; failing to prove proficiency can impede students’ future opportunities.

“We want them to know that this is important to their future, and we don’t want them to be counted out because they did not show mastery on a test,” Dawson said.

Knowing that many Philadelphia high school students must work part-time jobs to help support their families, district leaders decided to incentivize the course by offering a stipend, offsetting income students might lose by forgoing work to spend extra time in class.

“It’s about students making an investment in their future,” Dawson said. “It’s a trade-off, so they hopefully will not be discouraged from taking this opportunity.”

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At a November board meeting, Watlington and Dawson identified several reasons they believe already-low algebra achievement has dropped, including the district’s large stable of emergency-certified teachers and inexperienced teachers at the neediest schools.

Dawson also said then that officials are fine-tuning math pathways: Currently, the vast majority of district students take algebra in ninth grade, although some are ready to tackle it in eighth, and others could benefit from an extra year of foundational mathematics before moving to algebra.

Going forward, “we will be moving students not just by age, but by stage,” Dawson said, so in the future, students should be more prepared to succeed in algebra and on the Keystones.

The district also instituted a new math curriculum in the 2023-24 school year.

When Dawson and Watlington mentioned the algebra retake incentive at the Jan. 16 board progress monitoring session, there was no discussion, other than a brief mention by board member Joyce Wilkerson.

“We appreciate the innovation and being aggressive on behalf of our students,” Wilkerson said.