From Local Results to Texas Law: E3 Alliance and The Commit Partnership Widen Access to Advanced Math

Texas

Overview

A Texas student’s path to Algebra I in eighth grade once depended on who noticed. E3 Alliance and The Commit Partnership, both StriveTogether Network members, used local data to show who was being missed.

Their evidence helped lead to Senate Bill (SB) 2124, which automatically enrolls qualifying sixth graders in advanced math courses. This is Nested Civic Infrastructure™ at work — local evidence turning into policy, and that policy being implemented across the state to support more classrooms.

Texas passed SB 2124

In 2023, lawmakers voted to place qualifying sixth graders in advanced math automatically, unless parents opt out.
Access doubled statewide

32% of Texas seventh graders took the Grade 8 math state test (STAAR) in 2026, up from 16% in 2023.
Students from low-income households gained access

65,418 students experiencing poverty in Texas took advanced math in 2026, and their numbers grew much faster than everyone else’s.

National Background

Eighth grade math is one of the earliest reliable signals of how far students will go in school and work, and whether they will earn enough to build economic mobility. Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) research describes early Algebra as a key gateway to advanced high school math, STEM majors and higher lifetime earnings. StriveTogether’s Middle Grade Math Playbook draws on research showing that eighth grade math achievement is a strong predictor of high school graduation and is associated with higher income and greater educational attainment.

National results suggest that many students are not building that foundation.

In 2024, 28% of 8th graders were proficient in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

That share was 34% in 2019 and fell to 26% in 2022, so 2024 marks only a partial recovery.

ABCNews4

28%

of U.S. 8th graders scored at or above the Proficient level in math in 2024.

In eighth grade math, Texas sits below the 28% national figure. USAFacts reported that about 24% of Texas eighth graders reached NAEP Proficient in math in 2024, 15th lowest in the country. The contrast with fourth grade is sharp. About 43% of Texas fourth graders reached NAEP Proficient, ninth highest in the country. The state’s early strength fades by eighth grade, a disconnect that puts a spotlight on the middle grades.

Those averages also hide who gets into advanced math. An NWEA analysis of 162,000 eighth graders in 22 states found that only 58% of schools offered Algebra by eighth grade. Even among the top 20% of fifth-grade achievers, access was uneven. Black students were the least likely to take Algebra in eighth grade, at 60%, compared with 68% of white and Latine students and 84% of Asian students.

A 2026 NWEA analysis of 55,000 students in 29 states, reported by The 74, found that nearly a quarter of seventh graders whose scores met an algebra-readiness benchmark did not take algebra in eighth grade. Offering the course is only the first step. Qualifying students also need to be placed in it, with a clear path into the course when it is offered.

Expanding access to advanced math for qualifying students takes intention from the institutions that write placement rules, working from shared data and held accountable to shared results. That is the work two Texas partnerships took on in their own regions, starting with their own local data.

Local Context

The Education Reporting Collaborative reported that Texas has more than 1,000 school districts, and before 2023 each set its own rules for advanced math placement. Two StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network members, E3 Alliance in Central Texas and The Commit Partnership in Dallas County, saw that this patchwork of district placement rules wasn’t producing great results for youth. Both are place-based partnerships that bring districts, colleges, nonprofits, employers and funders together around shared data.

E3 Alliance, founded in 2006, works with 15 school districts in Central Texas, according to its Educational Profile of Central Texas. An E3 analysis of Central Texas fifth graders in 2014 found that, under district-set placement rules, only 33% of Black students and 46% of Latine students with top 20% State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR®) math scores completed Algebra I by the end of eighth grade.

Here in Central Texas, we were seeing a large gap, a large racial gap in access to advanced math where a number of white and Asian students were really represented in advanced math classes while black and Latine students were underrepresented.

Richard Tagle, president and executive director of E3 Alliance

Central Texas

Richard Tagle, president and executive director of Cradle to Ccreer Network member E3 Alliance, smiles at the camera.

The Commit Partnership, founded in 2012, works in Dallas County, where more than 700,000 students are enrolled from pre-K through higher education and two out of three young adults do not earn a living wage. Its North Star goal is that by 2040 at least half of county residents ages 25 to 34 will earn a living wage, irrespective of race.

Sile Robinson, Commit’s chief regional impact officer, said Algebra I is the milestone that matters most. “If students don’t take [Algebra I] by the time that they leave middle school, they will not be able to take college-aligned courses at the rate needed to actually be successful in post-secondary,” she said. Commit’s 2023 STAAR analysis found that 41% of Dallas County students met standards in Algebra I, down from as many as 65% before the pandemic.

In Dallas County, Garland Independent School District (ISD), a northeast Dallas County district of more than 50,000 students, had already built its own opt-out policy, automatically placing students proficient in fifth grade math on a pathway to Algebra I unless families opted out. Commit saw early results there, and E3’s research on math pathways and postsecondary credentials lined up with those results. The two partnerships then joined forces to push for a statewide opt-out policy: E3 coordinated a coalition of statewide education partnerships and supplied the research, and Commit brought the Dallas County proof point.

Strategies

Algebra I by eighth grade is one of the earliest levers students have for reaching college-level math, yet statewide only 18% of Texas students from low-income households were enrolled in it by the end of eighth grade, compared with 40% of their peers. Closing a gap like that took coordinated effort across districts, regional partnerships and the state.

Together, these strategies gave districts the evidence, the mandate and the support to change who gets into advanced math. The first results are now coming in.

Both partnerships began with the schools. E3 and Commit worked with local districts that were willing to change how students were placed in advanced math, and they tracked what happened. Those results became the evidence the partnerships later took to the state.

E3 Alliance and Central Texas districts

E3’s role was to supply the research and keep districts working together. “By looking at data, we can tell the story of what works, what’s been challenging, what needs to be modified,” Richard said. E3 began studying math pathways in 2013. The American School Board Journal reports that students whose highest high school math course was college-aligned earned a postsecondary credential five times as often as those whose highest course was Algebra II.

With the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, E3 coached several districts on policies, communications and classroom interactions, and districts that had relied on teacher recommendations switched to using an opt-out model and added supports. In Round Rock ISD’s Stony Point Learning Community, a group of 11 schools north of Austin, the share of sixth graders in advanced math rose from 33% to 75% between 2018 and 2021, and the practice is now districtwide, the article reports.

Hays Consolidated Independent School District (CISD), south of Austin, adopted its own opt-out policy in 2019. Before the change, students needed a teacher recommendation, an extra assessment and a certain grade average, and groups including special education and emergent bilingual students were being missed. Derek McDaniel, the district’s executive officer of curriculum and instruction, said the share of a cohort entering advanced math rose from between 20% and 22% in 2020 to between 35% and 40% by 2023.

In the first year, the biggest change was dropping the advanced placement contract, which removed students whose grades fell short in the first six weeks. “We knew that the kids needed more time to be successful,” he said. Hays added tutoring and intervention services, and teachers learned to accept “productive struggle,” when students might not get a lesson right the first time but can succeed with the right support, time and modeling.

Commit Partnership and Dallas County Districts

In Dallas County, Commit collected results from districts that had already switched to opt-out. Dallas ISD moved from opt-in to opt-out in 2019-20 and its share of eighth graders in Algebra I rose from 20% to 60% by 2023. An Annenberg Institute analysis found that the policy raised the share of students taking Algebra I before high school by about 13 percentage points. Garland ISD was among the earliest.

“In Garland ISD, we were early adopters of the Algebra I policy to ensure that students did not have a gatekeeper anymore as they entered into high school,” said Coleman Bruman, the district’s executive director of secondary teaching and learning. According to Coleman, two data points drove the decision. Students who take Algebra I in eighth grade are more likely to take Advanced Placement and dual credit courses. To get there, they need to start advanced math in sixth grade, which is why SB 2124 places qualifying sixth graders on the pathway.

“If we did not promote the students into an accelerated pathway early, they were less likely to take Algebra I early, and they would have some instructional gaps as they tried to jump later on in the later years.” The work began with “making sure that we had the right kids in the right spot,” he said, and Garland ran it the way it had run its college, career and military readiness push, with counselors, principals and academic leaders at one table. “We just took that culture and plugged it into this accelerated math pathway.”

Garland also added tutoring, high-quality instructional materials, a dedicated Algebra I instructional facilitator and four planning days a year for Algebra I teachers. The share of its students meeting grade level in Algebra I rose 10 percentage points in a single year.

With results from districts in Central Texas and Dallas County in hand, E3 and Commit took the case to the state capital. SB 2124 passed unanimously in 2023 and requires every Texas school district to automatically enroll sixth graders who score in the top 40% on fifth grade math assessment, or on a local measure, in advanced math. Parents are able to opt them out. The partners shared research and gave testimonies. Sharla Horton-Williams, then Commit’s senior director of academic recovery and a former middle school principal, testified in support of the legislation in both chambers. Derek also testified in support before the Senate Education Committee.

That testimony reflected a deliberate choice to put local data and district voices in front of lawmakers, said Bridget Worley, Commit’s chief state impact officer, who explained why it mattered in the Texas Capitol. “Texas is a fiscally conservative state, and in that kind of environment, it’s critically important when you’re advocating to bring data and real examples of success from school systems,” she said.

The law turned a recommendation into a requirement. The Texas Education Code now says districts must publish their criteria and place qualifying students whether or not a teacher recommends them.

If the law had been placed in 2018-19, 52,099 more Texas eighth graders would have been placed automatically in 2021-22. Richard described what the measure replaced. “Prior to the passage of Senate Bill 2124 access to advanced math was really based on values-based decision-making…it was the perception of teachers as to who was ready,” he said. The law replaced those judgment calls with a score, but writing it into statute was only the first step. Districts still had to make it work in classrooms.

A new law only changes outcomes if schools put it into practice. For Paige Darstein, director of statewide implementation at The Commit Partnership, that is where a regional partnership earns its place. Commit’s role, she said, is to act as a filter. “A place-based partnership… helps districts understand: ‘these are the policies that are coming out that require a significant change, and here are some best practices for how to implement them’,” she said.

After SB 2124 passed, Commit helped Dallas County districts use their data to identify the fifth graders who will qualify for advanced math in sixth grade and notify their families. It also helped them count the teachers certified to teach Algebra I, the course those students work toward in eighth grade. Commit is supporting other districts with board policy adoption and implementation. It is also supporting other districts with board policy adoption and implementation. The hardest part has been staffing. “The biggest challenge we’ve heard from school system leaders is having a credentialed teacher with really deep math content knowledge teach these courses in the middle school space,” Paige said.

Commit brings together district leaders in similar roles to look at data and bright spots. They source technical assistance from trusted vendors to run professional development training.

E3 built a needs assessment that has districts rate themselves on logistics, communication and building capacity, including whether families are told of their right to opt out at least two weeks before school starts. Commit held a summer 2024 policy workshop for 10 districts and one charter network serving more than 87% of the county’s students and also ran a year-long Math Learning Series. Commit’s Math Pathways Toolkit is now used in at least three regions beyond Dallas County.

Garland ISD, in Dallas County, piloted Algebra I for all students at Sam Houston Middle School for three years. They expanded to four campuses after that, and to all 12 middle schools this year. Coleman described Commit’s role this way: “To get every student across the threshold in Algebra 1, you’ve got to have your sideline coach that’s able to give you the resources, the coaching, the implementation, the statewide perspective on what’s going on, so that way you can really accelerate the kids like you never have before.”

Impact

The results show Nested Civic Infrastructure™ at work. Local partnerships found the problem and tested a solution, the state wrote a rule to codify it, and regional partners then helped put the rule into practice. Each level of infrastructure played a role that the others needed. The effect is visible from the state level all the way down to a single student’s schedule.

Texas has effectively doubled the number of middle schoolers accessing advanced math

The share of seventh graders taking the Grade 8 math STAAR doubled from 2023 to spring 2026. 65,418 of those students were from low-income households.

The Texas Education Agency

16%

of 7th graders took the Grade 8 math STAAR in 2023

32%

of 7th graders took the Grade 8 math STAAR in spring 2026

At the local level, E3 and Commit saw similar shifts in their regions. In Central Texas, districts working with E3 saw the gap in Algebra I completion between high-performing Black and white students close by 91% between 2015 and 2022, and the gap between high-performing Latine and white students close by 71%. The share of high-performing students completing Algebra I by the end of eighth grade grew from 57% in 2015 to 74% in 2024.

Richard said the statewide law carried that opening to the rest of Texas. “The opportunity that this policy created when it was passed was the fact that more minority students, more underserved populations were able to access this very important gateway to not just post-secondary work but to career choices across fields,” he said.

Between 2023-24 and 2024-25, participating Dallas County districts raised the share of students in Algebra I by eighth grade from 45% to 49%, with Black student enrollment rising from 31.3% to 36.7% and performance holding steady. Commit reports that Uplift Education, a tuition-free public charter network serving more than 23,000 students in Dallas and Fort Worth, raised eighth grade Algebra I enrollment from 77% in 2024 to 95% in 2025.

Garland ISD also reports steady growth of students becoming more successful in Algebra 1. From 2021 to 2025, the percentage of students meeting grade level performance on the Algebra I end-of-course exam increased from roughly 30% to more than 52%.

At the student level, the change shows up in individual pathways. Wahomina, a freshman in Garland ISD’s Math, Science and Technology program in Dallas, took the pathway from honors math in sixth grade to the Grade 8 STAAR in seventh, Algebra I in eighth and geometry now. “Because I took Algebra I in eighth grade, I’m able to take geometry now in ninth grade, and it sets me up to take higher level classes like pre-cal and trigonometry,” she said. “Some students, because they didn’t get to take Algebra I in their eighth grade year, they have to go back and take Algebra I. But for me it’s a different story …I don’t have to worry about that.”

Jessica Scanlon, a parent in Round Rock ISD, north of Austin, saw the change at home. Her daughter, now in seventh grade, was automatically enrolled in advanced math in sixth grade, and Jessica worried about what would happen if she struggled. “Nobody wants to say to their kid, ‘We have to drop you back to regular math, because you’re not doing well,’” she said. “That was my biggest fear, but it turns out that it’s been a great decision.”

[My daughter] was super nervous about accelerated math specifically, and now it’s one of her best subjects. Her confidence is through the roof, and she loves math now, which I couldn’t have dreamed for a better outcome.

Jessica Scanlon, parent in Round Rock ISD

Round Rock, Texas

Future Vision

The first results show changes in access. Next, the partnerships want to know whether students are succeeding. Paige described what Commit will watch for: “When implementation is going really well, you should see three key things. First, you should see an increase in the number of students who are enrolled in that advanced math course in sixth grade. Second, those students should matriculate to Algebra I in eighth grade. And so, you should see an increase in enrollment there. And third, and most importantly, you should see an increase in the percentage of students who are in eighth grade Algebra I actually being successful in that course and demonstrating proficiency on the end-of-year assessment.”

For Priscilla, the hope is broader. “I hope that through this policy, that students have more of an opportunity to see themselves being successful in these classrooms, in these more advanced courses, so they can see themselves with a stronger future,” she said.

E3 says it remains committed to helping districts and campuses move “from policy to practical application” through training sessions tailored to each district. Sessions cover logistics such as course access, curriculum alignment and student placement, communications and messaging inside and outside the district, and building instructional capacity through teacher professional development and equitable teaching practices.

Garland ISD, in northeast Dallas County, has the longest runway. Its system now runs from sixth grade through twelfth. “We’ve really pushed towards our vision of having as many students in Algebra 1 in 8th grade as possible. The continued work is going to be making sure that they’re successful as they pursue through high school on college entrance exams,” Coleman said.

Commit’s part in that next phase, he said, is helping the district see obstacles coming. “Having a sustained partnership like [Commit] helps you project those speed bumps and be able to move past them in a fast way.”

Richard said advanced math builds skills that carry into any field. “Middle grade advanced math prepares students for post-secondary work and their careers later on…Advanced math prepares you for STEM work. It prepares you for communications and marketing. It prepares you for research and allows you to really take very abstract ideas and concepts and know how to calculate and turn them into practical steps,” he said.

Commit describes its policy work as resting on a statewide coalition that includes other StriveTogether Network members, E3 among them. A partner like E3, which understands its regional context and operates as a backbone, helps the two organizations pool resources and approach state policy collectively. Being part of the StriveTogether Network also connected Commit to peers in other regions facing similar challenges.

Texas is one state, but the stakes are national. E3 Alliance and The Commit Partnership used local data to show which students were being missed, worked with other statewide partners to turn that evidence into SB 2124 and then with districts to carry it out.

The work is evidence that place-based partnerships can move from local pilot to statewide change by building the Nested Civic Infrastructure™ that lets districts, partners and the state work from the same data. Other states are asking the same question, and what E3 and Commit built gives others a foundation that starts with local data, steady partners and a clear placement rule. Each time a community finds a student who was being missed and changes the system that missed them, the path to economic mobility widens for the next one.

Additional Stories

View All