At Berkeley High School, two pathways for math are offered: the standard math route and the Advanced Math pathway, an accelerated version of Math 1-3 that includes additional topics covered in a shorter amount of time, according to the BHS Math Department website. Described as a course for students “who have passion for mathematics and want to invest extra time and effort,” the sequence requires a “considerable amount of time and dedication,” which many find comparable to the time necessary for an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate course.
Placement and enrollment in Advanced Math determines the math courses available to students throughout high school. According to the BHS Math Department, Advanced Math students have the option of taking AP Calculus BC or IB Higher Level Math their senior year, whereas these options are not open for seniors in the standard track, who are limited to taking AP Calculus AB, AP Statistics, or IB Standard Level Math.
For many, admittance into Advanced Math begins before students step foot on BHS campus, with a placement test taken by eighth graders. It is composed of common core math standards in the middle school curriculum, according to the BHS 9th Grade Math FAQ 2025-26 document. For those who do not pass the first test and are placed in Math 1, there is a retest into Advanced Math 1 which is offered once school begins.
Another retest is offered in the spring of freshman year as the last opportunity to enter Advanced Math. Coupled with the completion of additional work over the summer, those students are then placed in Advanced Math 2 in the fall.
According to Benjamin Nathan, Advanced Math 2 and AP Calculus AB teacher, the placement test is “not perfect.” “We’re doing it in the fairest way we can, (but) are we gonna miss kids who should be in Advanced Math? Absolutely,” he said, “Are there gonna be kids in Advanced Math who shouldn’t be in there? Absolutely. Both of those things are going to happen. There’s nothing much we can do about either of them.”
This issue raises a deeper question about BHS’ accelerated math course: what does the Advanced Math placement test reflect about the pathway as a whole?
It may suggest that the pathway is imperfect by design. However, there still might be ways to improve. According to Nathan, one method to make the process more fair would be to place all incoming freshmen in a universal Math 1 class, rather than siphoning a select group to Advanced Math 1. Then, a test into the Advanced Math pathway would be administered at the end of freshman year, rather than testing students before they enter high school, he explained.
This approach would place all students on equal footing, according to Nathan. Differences in middle school teaching and curriculum can impact a student’s understanding of the material on the placement test, resulting in a lack of representation of different demographics in the Advanced Math track.
Such was the case for BHS sophomore Philip Ranjan. As he remembers, in middle school, students “were told that (the placement test) would be (focused on) everything that we learned in middle school,” he said. He took the test based on what he learned at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School and some moderate studying done on IXL, an online learning platform.
He did not pass the first placement test into Advanced Math 1 nor the second one into Advanced Math 2. He appealed the second rejection, describing in an email to BHS Principal Juan Raygoza the reasons why he thought the decision was “incorrect.”
“I have been studying since October, studying all of Math 1 and parts of Math 2,” he wrote, “In regular math, I have an A+, having almost a 98 (percent).” He added that he scored in the 96th percentile of the STAR Math exam, an assessment used in Berkeley Unified School District schools to measure math achievement and growth. “If this doesn’t show my math skills, determination, and overall success rate, I don’t know what will,” Ranjan wrote in the email to Raygoza, which he shared with the Jacket. “In order to get into (Advanced Math), I’ll honestly do 200 pages of summer work.”
After reviewing Ranjan’s appeal on the second test, taking into consideration “assessment data, standardized testing, and overall performance,” Ranjan was not accepted into Advanced Math 2, according to an email sent by Raygoza to families whose appeals had been denied.
BHS freshman Tabitha Herron Wilson also felt that her math classes at Willard Middle School did not teach her all of the skills needed on the Advanced Math 1 placement test. However, she studied for the test for a year by taking classes at Kumon, a popular math and English enrichment program.
The Kumon worksheets included the most advanced application of the concepts she had learned in her class, Herron Wilson explained. The content of the Advanced Math placement test was such a complicated version of the math she knew that she believes if she hadn’t done the Kumon preparation she “probably wouldn’t have gotten into Advanced Math.”
The discrepancies between middle school math educations could be alleviated by teaching all students the same Math 1 curriculum, Nathan explained. This way, students would be set on a more level playing ground for a placement test into the Advanced Math pathway at the end of the year.
According to Nathan, this arrangement would also address the influence of private tutoring and outside supplemental math classes on acceptance to the Advanced Math course, which can contribute to disparities in the diversity of students in the track. Nathan explained that some students have private tutors who “know exactly what to focus on” because they’ve had students who took the test before.
In a situation where all students were placed in Math 1, students without tutors would be more prepared from their BHS class.
As a result, rather than being a question of where one attended middle school or what tutor they had, the test “would then be a question of, ‘How on it were you during Math 1? Were you paying attention? Were you doing the work?’” Nathan said.
Additionally, it would allow students to make an important decision about the rest of their high school math career once they’re already oriented within the school, as opposed to before they’ve even set foot on campus.
This approach had been attempted in the years before COVID-19, but was ultimately rejected by parents, Nathan explained. “There was a board meeting and parents complained, and they just said, ‘My child needs Advanced Math,’” Nathan said, “Would (Advanced Math) be better if we had changed it? We don’t know. We didn’t have a chance to do that because we were told we couldn’t.”
Still, Nathan is hoping for a reform of the pathway. “I’m hoping that with a (different) bell schedule and a redesign, there will become more avenues that are more open and fairer for more people,” he said.