Background And Content Rationale
The Kids are not the Threat seminar highlights the radical activism of young people in the struggle for civil rights. In his assessment of SNCC, Howard Zinn describes the young as the most dependable in a revolution. Although the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement led many to look back fondly to applaud the former SNCC chairman John Lewis for getting into good trouble, Dr. King (2010) reminds us in his lecture, Youth and Social Action, that the older generation was critical of the young—wondering why they were “so unfathomable, so alienated, and frequently so freakish.” Despite the criticisms, Dr. King asserts that the youth birthed a new spirit of resistance. The young in today’s generation are under scrutiny as in generations past. In a May 2026 press conference, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro argued that teen takeovers (large teen gatherings in public spaces coordinated and streamed on social media “are not harmless gatherings; they are violent, and they are disruptive.”[3] She dismissed the idea that the youth need alternative activities, arguing that community centers are open. She then proceeded to advocate for prosecuting the parents of teens who commit crimes—a measure that would undoubtedly disproportionately affect low-income families. Though these gatherings are undesirable to adults, the ability to use social media to galvanize and influence large groups is a remarkable feat for these young people and leads one to wonder how they can harness their influence.
In schools, student test, attendance, and suspension data is scrutinized to predict their postsecondary outcomes. According to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education website, scoring at a level 4 or 5 on CAPE indicates that students are college and career ready, while scoring at a level 2 indicates that students have “much of the skills necessary to be successful in future grades and in post-secondary pathways.” Johnson’s math CAPE data would therefore lead to the conclusion that 1% of students are college and career ready, 14% are ready for a pathway, and the remaining 85% do not even receive a descriptor on the website. As Dr. King encouraged the three groups of youth he described (including those who rejected society) to mobilize together for social change, this unit aims to motivate students (including those who aren’t deemed college/career/pathway ready) to view command of data representation as power. Students should be empowered to interpret the data collected about them, and use data to effect change, in the world at large and in their respective future outcomes as math literate adults.
Representation takes on many meanings in the unit—statistically speaking, it refers both to those represented in a population sample as well as the ways in which students choose to represent the data in visual form to persuade the dissenting or apathetic population. Further, representation refers to the cultural relevance students will experience seeing themselves in young changemakers of the past, and in turn, envisioning themselves as the new kids who can investigate ideas and articulate their findings. In Algebra I, students must expand their understanding of statistics from middle school study to differentiate between statistical versus non-statistical questions and categorical versus numerical data. They are expected to represent and interpret various representations of data and describe distributions using statistical terminology. Students must learn that standard deviation is a measure of variability and interpret the meaning of outliers in a data set. Further, they will examine how one measure of central tendency e.g. mean, median, mode and interquartile range can illustrate their stance more clearly than another measure.
Students will examine the intentionally easily readable infographics created by W.E.B Du Bois at the turn of the 20th century as well as the contemporary infographics created and posted on Instagram by Mona Chalabi. Students will examine how both artists/activists represent data in a digestible and impactful format for their audiences a century apart. Presenting students with this style of visual representation will serve as an entry point for students to understand that an observer should be able to glean specific information from an infographic. Those who struggle with reading traditional graphs can practice close reading with the infographics and learn to translate the data they gather into another form of statistical representation. They will follow the process of explaining what they notice while being prompted to ask mathematical questions, considering how the information can be represented differently. Given various graphs, students will consider what statistical question is being answered, draw conclusions supported by the data, find measures of central tendency and/or generate equations for lines of best fit. These exercises should help them discover how graphs can be used to highlight the necessity for change.
To conclude the unit, students will be tasked with writing a statistical question to investigate a matter of importance to them. Questions could range from suspension data across middle schools to gathering opinions about school lunch options and uniforms. Students will then decide how to represent their data to change-makers and stakeholders visually, using traditional graphs and/or infographics, and in writing. Notably, the writing component can include song composition, reminiscent of the protest music of the civil rights era. The culminating activity aims to illustrate to students how representations of data can serve to legitimize the claims and concerns of young people who might otherwise be written off as idealistic and irrational. Ending the unit with public exhibition or a student-organized rally showcasing student findings to invited stakeholders will further encourage students to believe in the power of their voices in representation.
Reclaiming Data
“Many poor and minority kids know how far behind they are; it is part of what frightens them. But their response is not to organize for change, or to make plans for direct action.” [4]
At the opening of school year 2025-2026, after breakfast and icebreakers, administrative staff directed teacher attention to a smart board to share staggering statistics about the end-of-year (EOY) state math test results. The slides displayed graphs that were overwhelmingly covered in red with a splash of yellow, allowing even self-proclaimed non-math people to discern that the lack of green signified there was a major problem. Another slide made the message clear: One percent proficient.
As educators, we often hear that instruction should be data driven. To that end, we administer diagnostic tests and display the newest edition of green-deficient data charts in our classrooms to remind ourselves and students of the tireless pursuit of proficiency. Image 1 displays the 2025 beginning-of-year (BOY) diagnostic data that was posted for students on an in-classroom data wall. But what is the effect of the posted data representations on students? What does 1% proficient mean to a student who cannot interpret or calculate the percent of a number? They know that one is a low number, that green is a desired color on a graph, that there is a problem; but the gaps in their math literacy impacts their ability to ascertain what the graph reveals to stakeholders and what information is missing.
There are arguments both for and against using data walls in classrooms, outlining their effect on morale, but I don’t make an argument for either position here. I argue that our students can answer the question for themselves but first they must be asked. If a teacher chooses or is mandated to post class data, the teacher should be sure to give students repeated opportunities to reflect on the data, its meaning, and their affective response to it. Students should be questioned about what the colors signify to them and what they believe the data communicates or what additional investigation it calls for.
Proficiency graphs fail to highlight student growth; students who scored on 2nd grade level at BOY and at 5th grade level at EOY, will still find their data represented by red on the graph (red categorizes scores two or more grade levels below proficiency). While the students will have made substantial gains, it will appear to stakeholders as if nothing has changed for these students—highlighting the need for a different type of data representation to tell the untold story.
Figure 1. Screenshot of Fall 2025 i-Ready diagnostic data[5]
Data points can highlight demand, but students must envision themselves as shapers of the demand. While policymakers can use student data to anticipate a demand for fewer opportunities in advanced mathematics, parents and students can point to the same data as evidence that more opportunities are needed. Results of a parent survey conducted by Moses, asking Black parents whether they believed their children should take Algebra I, were overwhelmingly affirmative as parents tended to believe their own children could rise to the occasion regardless of their standardized test scores.[6] Maybe parents and students still desire access to advanced math but we will only know if we ask the people we serve. If teachers can latch on to the moments when parents and students are most confident about student ability to grapple with difficult content, a movement calling for sustained rigor can be galvanized.
What if the data is not calling for remediation but for deeper content contextualization and internalization that leads to ownership? Whose opinions are represented in determining the answer? Students should consider these questions as they begin developing their own statistical question as part of the culminating activity.
Student Demand
“We seem to be interviewing the fish in the sea to find out what the birds in the heavens are doing” – E.E. Schattschneider[7]
We must get our answers from the students we serve—we must see students as capable of providing answers worthy of adult attention. Moses argues “Here, where kids are falling wholesale through the cracks— or chasms— dropping out of sight, becoming fodder for jails, people say they do not want to learn. The only ones who can dispel that notion are the kids themselves.” The language here is reminiscent of Denis Mora of the Fort Hood Three, who in his statement disavowing the Vietnam War recognizes that the Pentagon views him and his fellow soldiers as merely cannon fodder. He however asserts that cannon fodder can talk and that the message of the fodder is anti-propaganda, anti-war and anti-genocide. Likewise, students, if they are to be treated like fodder, must become loud talking fodder. While Moses doesn’t refer to the Fort Hood Three in Radical Equations, he draws a parallel between the assumptions made by those in power about sharecroppers demanding the right to vote as apathetic, and the assumptions made about students that their dysfunction inhibits their education.[8] He asserts that if significant change will happen in math literacy for disenfranchised students, it will be because those students demand the literacy that systems claim students do not want.
Students must be given the tools to represent themselves. Youth activist, Margolin, muses, “what we get in trouble most for at school is usually questioning the rules. But questioning the rules may actually be where our greatest power lies.”[9] Questioning is key to students being able to make sense of the world and build lasting understanding—so long as students remain curious, they can and will learn.
Questioning will lead students to identify an investigative statistical question that matters to them. Dr. Rod Ferguson, in his seminar “The Kids are not the Threat” often reminded us that an axiom of organizing is that all organizing is local. For students to engage with issues that are important to them, the teacher will serve as an organizer. It is not the role of the teacher or organizer to impose ideas onto students but rather to assist them in acquiring the tools to express their own observations as their ideas and understandings evolve.
Teachers as Organizers
When the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) comprised of the four major civil rights groups (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC) along with hundreds of northern students arrived in 1964 Mississippi, they learned that the rural community was not interested in lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts as forms of resistance because they did not have public transportation systems or lunch counters. With less than 5% of the state’s Black population registered to vote, compared to the 50-70% registration in other southern states, the local community’s greatest need was ending voter suppression.[10] The visiting students embedded themselves in the community, staying in the locals’ homes, working alongside them, while establishing freedom schools to prepare the locals academically and politically. In becoming part of the community, organizers become aware of its strengths, concerns, and customs. Unlike a colonizer, the organizer does not arrive with a complete answer, rather they co-construct a solution with the community, helping members build consensus through sharing opinions and questioning one another.[11]
Cobb (who later continued his partnership with Bob Moses on Radical Equations) proposed the formation of Freedom Schools in 1963, understanding that schools in Mississippi were “part of the apparatus of oppression.”[12] In 1964, 41 Freedom Schools opened in Mississippi to serve the needs of native Mississippians from pre-school age children to lifelong field working elders. Classes were held in churches and under trees and while they had little to no funding, their curriculum was comprehensive and impactful. The curriculum focused on teaching reading, writing, and math through an experiential and multidisciplinary approach.
Curriculum writers believed that content and methodology should be responsively adjusted to maintain student interest and that positive relationships between teachers and students were tantamount. This represented a break from the ideas of established school systems which sought to maintain compliance and conformity. Group discussion and questioning decentered the teacher, both spatially, as they sat in circles, and ideologically. Students were taught to see themselves and their classmates as agents of social change. Through review of case studies, students were provided with documents and data and asked to draw on their own experiences to relate the case studies to what was happening in their communities. This is precisely the work that students will engage in throughout this unit. Driven by their ability to make connections between infographics with which they are presented and their lived experiences, students will learn data representation methods that empower them to make social change. An excerpt from a mathematics curriculum offers teachers the following advice: “The standard method of teaching math in Mississippi is through routine drill, and more routine drill. If your course tends to seem routine, like regular school, the students will tend to loose [sic] interest and you may loose [sic] them. Be creative. Experiment. The kids will love it.”[13] This 1960s advice is more relevant than ever as educators must take care not to contribute to the apparatus of oppression.
In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire advises teachers against turning students into receptacles to be filled by the teacher. He refers to this practice as the banking concept of education, in which student learning and growth is determined by the degree to which they can memorize and demonstrate their memorization on demand. Transferrable knowledge is attained through asking questions, failure, invoking creativity, and problem solving. The stakes are too high to abandon student-centered learning for memorization in hopes of seeing higher standardized test scores. Freire warns, “the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.” [14] When students grapple with content and make mistakes in a math classroom, they build the critical thinking skills necessary to solve problems they encounter in adulthood. They can come to understand that knowledge is always being created and consequently, they can begin to envision their future selves in cutting edge problem-solving careers. When they discover knowledge in a classroom setting with the teacher serving as facilitator, they become empowered to believe that they can become discoverers of knowledge in various fields. The Algebra Project sees student enrollment in higher level math courses as necessary to being able to participate meaningfully in society both economically and civically. A student who has been spoon-fed facts is less likely to develop new technologies in the future because they have not developed risk-taking skills through trial and error. As society consistently grows toward new technological advancement, a lack of algebra proficiency is not only a barrier to student enrollment in higher math classes, but a barrier to citizenship in the technologically advanced society. Students with lower math skills are positioned to be merely consumers of the technology rather than its shapers.
In a school with poor test data, tracking students and rushing through material for those who can get it quickly is a seductive but inequitable path. Utilization of the banking method even as an interim measure “justified on grounds of expediency, with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion” is a betrayal of true revolutionary education—preventing students from developing empowering thought processes. True acquisition of knowledge can be evidenced by learning transfer, or the ability to apply knowledge to novel situations. The banking method churns out students who are only prepared to answer standardized test questions presented in familiar formats while remaining ill-equipped to think critically across contexts.
Problem-based learning, such as the use of case studies in the Freedom Curriculum, promote learning transfer as students spend time extracting information, relating it to their experiences, and representing the information in various ways. Student exposure to multiple contexts in their instruction allows students to develop a flexible representation of knowledge, making them more likely to find the similarities between unique problem scenarios by abstracting the relevant features of shared concepts.[15] A study on algebraic word problems revealed that compared to students who are trained to perform specific task components, recipients of abstract training demonstrated learning transfer presented with new problems involving analogous relations.[16]
While content expertise is invaluable, teachers must also be guided by the way young people think. Their ways of thinking should guide teachers to reconceptualize math in terms that allow students to connect. For this to occur, teachers must be willing to show up as an organizer who is willing to listen and respond to the needs of students. Teacher commitment to increasing content expertise should not result in the teacher’s knowledge and ways of communicating becoming increasingly inaccessible to the student. On the contrary, stronger content knowledge should contribute to the teacher’s ability to communicate content on various levels—recognizing the threads connecting basic math and higher-level concepts.
Radical Equations highlights a story about Ari, a student who was performing significantly below grade level on standardized assessments. Though he could not multiply, he was inspired to enroll in Algebra I because his friends were enrolled. As a proponent of algebra for all, Moses allowed him to participate, and while Ari required additional tutoring services, he was committed to consistently attempting difficult math because his friends were building a culture that valued higher level content offerings.
In referencing Ari’s story, I do not imply that students enrolled in my Algebra I class will not require intervention to acquire missed skills, rather that the promotion of disconnected rote memorization is not meaningful intervention. Realistically, memorization will likely not be effective for a student in 8th grade if it was ineffective 6 years ago. A lack of calculation fluency does not preclude a student from understanding a real-life concept. In fact, preventing student access to higher order thinking questions says to a student that they are not ready for life even though life will be inevitably ready for them. Taxes will be taken from their first summer job check whether they know how to multiply or not—predatory lenders will offer them financing even if they don’t understand percentages. Central to this unit, is the idea that data is collected and used against them whether they have acquired the skills to analyze the conclusions drawn or not.
A second-grade student’s recitation of multiplication facts does not mean they are cognitively prepared to understand pay rates. Older students, however, have experiential knowledge with money that can be leveraged to strengthen their application of multiplication even when they lack fluency. Further, where they lack experience, they are cognitively prepared to glean information from a teacher-created shared experience. Teachers can reinforce gaps in student understanding while exposing students to higher level concepts through problem-based learning. Rather than exchanging grade-level content for drills before investigating pay rates on a histogram, the teacher should leverage their advanced content knowledge to contextualize the material in such a way that clarifies the relevance of multiplicative comparisons for the student. Ideally, the student can discover reason to improve their multiplication fluency after coming to understand the relevance and connection between seemingly disjointed math skills and their lived experiences.
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