# How the ‘math wars’ in Palo Alto reflect a raging nationwide debate over equity and excellence **By:** Ko Lyn Cheang, Staff Writer **Published:** 2026-10-25T11:00:00Z **Source:** [San Francisco Chronicle](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/math-class-palo-alto-school-district-22478798.php) --- School board candidates John Craig and Avery Wang canvass with volunteers at the Palo Alto Farmers Market on Oct. 18, 2026. Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle School board candidate Linda Henigin canvasses with volunteers at the Palo Alto Farmers Market on Oct. 18, 2026. Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle School board candidate Avery Wang canvasses with volunteers at the Palo Alto Farmers Market on Oct. 18, 2026. Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle Aditya, a Palo Alto seventh-grader, used to love math but now finds it unchallenging. He wanted to take algebra this year, but he can’t because he failed a test to skip ahead. “Now I’m stuck in seventh-grade math, and it’s so boring,” said Aditya, who the Chronicle is identifying by first name only because he’s a minor. “I strongly dislike the system.” His concerns echo those of one side of a divisive debate raging in the Palo Alto Unified School District over mathematics education, which has culminated in a contentious school board race for two termed-out seats. While next five-person board will have to address a substantial budget deficit, mathematics has become a defining issue for at least two candidates, one of whom sued the district after his son was prevented from taking a more advanced course the lawsuit argued he was qualified for. The debates have centered on three main issues: whether the district is making it too difficult to skip a grade in math, if the district should track kids into separate math classes based on performance, and whether it should offer advanced classes beyond AP Calculus.  At the core of the current debate is whether a new math framework that Palo Alto implemented in 2020 is working, part of a wider dispute in many Bay Area districts over how to balance equity and excellence. The University of California came under increasing national scrutiny over whether to bring back SAT and ACT scores in admissions after a report about UC students struggling with basic math. Palo Alto eliminated middle school math tracking in 2020 with the purpose of ensuring all students would take algebra by eighth grade, which research has shown can improve math achievement. To do so, it compressed four years of math into three. It got rid of accelerated math courses in middle school, though students are permitted to skip a grade of math if they pass an annual test in middle school, a hurdle that’s sparked pushback.  In recent years, Palo Alto Unified — a wealthy, high-performing district in the heart of Silicon Valley — has been caught up in fights over honors biology, ethnic studies, a new grading system and the use of AI.  “Math is one of the most important, and most debated, subjects in Palo Alto, and that reflects how much our families care about their children’s futures,” Superintendent Jason Glass said in a statement. “Families and staff hold strong, sincere views on how well this model serves every student, from those who need more support to those ready to move faster. Our job is to answer that question with evidence.” The district did not respond to a more detailed list of questions about math policies. School board candidates Avery Wang, who sued the district over its math policy, and John Craig are co-campaigning to overturn the current math system, favoring reforms that will enable academic tracking and easier acceleration in middle school.   The third candidate, Linda Henigin, said she supports the status quo math system, arguing that heterogeneous classrooms improve student learning and equity.  Equity concerns Debate has raged in recent years about whether dividing kids into classes based on performance exacerbates the racial achievement gap and forecloses opportunities to lower-performing students. Both sides point to research to back up their claims and California academics have at times engaged in bitter, highly public disputes. Socioeconomic achievement gaps and racial achievement gaps between Black and Hispanic students and white and Asian students have been widening statewide since 2009, according to a recent report by Sean Reardon, a Stanford professor. Palo Alto has also seen growing disparities in math proficiency rates in recent years. Last school year, 32% of Hispanic eighth-graders tested proficient in math, compared with 93% of Asian and 80% of white students, according to statewide assessment data. “To fix that, instruction needs to improve, not just how much content we ask teachers to get through in middle school,” said Alix Gallagher, director of education policy and outcomes at Policy Analysis for California Education, a research center at Stanford University.  Still, Palo Alto’s Hispanic students perform in the top 15% of math students nationwide, according to an analysis by Stanford researchers. (Due to a very small population of Black and Native American students in Palo Alto the state does not report their scores to protect student privacy.) Making their pitch Wang and Craig argue that struggling students are not doing better in the wake of the district’s 2020 math framework and that well-resourced parents are sending their children for supplementary math classes because they aren’t challenged enough in school. They advocate for students taking algebra when they’re ready — in either seventh, eighth or ninth grades — and for classes to be further broken up by performance. School board candidate John Craig canvasses with volunteers at the Palo Alto Farmers Market on Oct. 18, 2026. Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle “When you talk to teachers, if you have that big a variety in a classroom, it’s really hard to teach,” Craig said.  Henigin, who is an elementary school math support teacher, disagrees. She said her experience informed her belief in a mixed-ability classroom. “Kids need to be in spaces where they can be challenged and get support, because the kid that rose to the challenge yesterday might need support today,” she said. Even advanced kids can be challenged in a mixed classroom by going “deep,” she said. School board candidate Linda Henigin embraces volunteer Nallely Gomez while canvassing at the Palo Alto Farmers Market on Oct. 18, 2026. Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle While Henigin is endorsed by the teachers’ union, which points to her classroom experience, the head of the union, Tom Culbertson, supports revisiting the middle school math framework.  “I don’t think it’s really met the goals of equity in terms of bringing up struggling math students, neither has it succeeded in meeting the needs of more advanced math students,” he said. Rowena Chiu, a board member, has endorsed Wang and Craig, who have said that the trio could form a board majority to change the district’s math policy. “We’re all in favor of equity, we just disagree about how to solve the equity issue,” Chiu said.  Wang and Craig also take issue with the district’s math placement process. The district eventually settled Wang’s 2020 lawsuit and his son was placed in the advanced class he wanted, but Wang said problems remain with testing kids for skipping grades based on an “all-or-nothing” exam. He advocates also considering teacher recommendations.  Meanwhile, Henigin said the “skip test” is hard because the content students must master to skip is hard. Conflict over policies Josh Spira, an eighth-grade math teacher at Greene Middle School in Palo Alto, said he thinks reforms are needed. He has many students who work hard but are struggling through algebra because their math foundations are lacking. At the same time, he said, the current math framework has challenged teachers to get creative with new teaching models. For instance, he’s emphasized a more collaborative approach.   Palo Alto sixth-grader Alex told the Chronicle that students should be put in classes based on the “amount of good-ness they are at math.” He doesn’t like math. He recently flunked a test reviewing fourth-grade math and has to retake it. He said tracking kids would let some “do harder things” and ensure others who are struggling are “not dragging behind.” Alex Tsagaan, 16, of Palo Alto, poses for a portrait on Oct. 20, 2026. Thien-An Truong/For the S.F. Chronicle Alex Tsagaan, president of the Gunn High School Math Circle, loves math so much that he’s working on his own research paper about a concept called cubic reciprocity. A junior, he completed calculus in sophomore year. “I don’t think schools should be limiting students from challenging themselves academically,” he said, especially in high school. That said, he worried about accelerating kids too quickly in middle school.  Melissa, a seventh-grader who excels at math, said she liked the current system because “students who want to accelerate can.” But she said further separating kids based on math ability in middle school would create unnecessary “friction.” “We are already pretty competitive in this district,” she said. Another major fight in Palo Alto has been over multivariable calculus. In 2023, the district canceled the high-level class, saying it lacked a credentialed teacher. In response, hundreds of students signed a petition and packed board meetings to appeal. A Palo Alto High School math teacher, Daniel Nguyen, paid $12,000 out of his own pocket to obtain a master’s degree to meet the credentialing requirement. But during the last school year, a council of educators at both Palo Alto high schools rejected the course, arguing it would serve few students and set back equity and students’ well-being. “If teaching math can harm students, then we have a lot bigger issues to talk about than whether to offer this course,” Nguyen told the Chronicle. Vineet Petlur, 17, of Palo Alto, poses for a portrait on Oct. 20, 2026. Thien-An Truong/For the S.F. Chronicle Vineet Petlur, a Gunn High School senior who advocated for the class, said it just made sense that “if you love something, you want to advance in it.” He said he agreed with equity concerns, but the solution was to “uplift everybody, don’t drag anybody to the floor.”    Brian Conrad, a Stanford mathematician, told the Chronicle that he felt math was treated as a “punching bag” for equity and mental health concerns. “The school doesn’t cut sports teams simply because some kids are far more talented at sports,” he said. “Why is it that the teaching of math generates much more controversy than other subjects?” Kaicheng Luo, who graduated from Gunn High School in 2025, said he wished that he’d had an advanced math option to take during school hours in senior year. He ended up enrolling in a Mission College linear algebra class that clashed with his tennis practice, juggling both. In March, Chiu, one of the board members, tried to compel the district’s high schools to offer the course, which the board rejected in a 3-2 decision. Then in April, amid mounting backlash, school administrators told Nguyen that he could teach it after all.  Today, he teaches the course at both high schools with a total of 64 students enrolled.   Nguyen said he’d like the district to revisit the 2020 “reimagining middle school math” framework after the election. “I hope they examine whether ‘reimagining math’ has borne the fruit they promised,” Nguyen said, “and whether changing directions might better serve students.”