Black students in Florida’s STEM pipeline: Among middle school students who passed Florida’s Algebra 1 end-of-course exam this spring, black students are significantly underrepresented. But some districts are doing better on this issue than others.

Taking Algebra 1 in middle school is a key milestone for students in the pipeline for bachelor’s degree-level STEM careers. So it’s disturbing that the percentage of black students reaching that milestone is so much smaller than the corresponding percentage for the whole student population.

Of Florida’s 220,975 public school 7th graders, 10.1% (22,390) passed the Algebra 1 end of course exam this spring, according to the Florida Department of Education EdStats portal. But of the state’s 47,926 black public school 7th graders, only 5.2% (2,750) did so.

The 8th grade picture is similar. Of Florida’s 213,672 public school 8th graders, 29.0% (61,871) passed the Algebra 1 EOC this spring. The corresponding numbers for the state’s black students? Of 45,684 black 8th graders, only 18.0% (8,209) passed the Algebra 1 EOC.

The situation varies dramatically among school districts. In the plots below, forty-five districts – those with enough black students in middle school Algebra 1 classes (more than 10 in either 7th or 8th grade) to show up in the Florida Department of Education’s statistics posted on the department’s EdStats portal – are ranked according to a methodology recently used here to rank districts on middle school Algebra 1. We calculated the numbers of 7th and 8th graders that passed the Algebra 1 EOC as percentages of the total 7th and 8th grade membership in each district. Then we added those two percentages up to calculate the middle school Algebra 1 index and ranked the districts. In the right side panel, these 45 districts are ranked for all students. In the left side panel, the districts are ranked the same way, but for black students only.

There are several features of the graph that are clear from a first glance. First, Collier County has a remarkable degree of success with black students – and far outpaces all other school districts in this regard. Second, nearly all of the state’s biggest urban school districts (Miami-Dade, Broward, Duval, Orange, Palm Beach and Hillsborough) are having more success with black students than nearly all of the state’s less populous districts (Collier, Taylor and St. Lucie being the exceptions). Among the state’s big urban districts, only Pinellas seems to fall short.

A closer look reveals that several districts rank significantly worse for black students than they do in the ranking for all students. The most remarkable case of this seems to be Martin County, which is ranked 8th for all students among the 45 districts examined here, but which is ranked 43rd when only black students are tabulated.

The underrepresentation of black students among middle school Algebra 1 EOC passers is not even close to being the end of the story about black students in Florida’s STEM pipeline. The underrepresentation of black students among Florida students who pass Advanced Placement exams in calculus, physics and computer science is much more severe than that among middle school Algebra 1 EOC exam passers. That severe underpresentation of black students is evident in the statistics of who earns degrees in engineering, the physical and mathematical sciences and computing from Florida’s public universities as well.

But solving the problem of the racial disparity in middle school Algebra 1 classrooms will be a necessary step on the road to STEM equity in Florida schools, colleges and universities.