Early Starters in Math Reach Higher Levels

Algebra in 8th grade makes advanced math classes more likely.

Students who take calculus, trigonometry, or advanced statistics late in high school are delving into the sort of mathematics that many of their teenage peers aren’t likely to encounter until college, if at all.

Yet the path to those and other demanding math courses begins as early as middle school, a recent federal study suggests.

Students who took geometry as 9th graders—and were therefore likely to have taken Algebra 1 in 8th grade or earlier—were 2½ times more likely to enroll in an advanced math class later in high school, the study found, than those who waited a year to take...