Over a decade ago, I learned about a pioneering course at Cabrillo College in California. In it, students collected survey data in their neighborhoods on issues such as youth gangs or discrimination against immigrants, learned statistical methods to analyze that data, and presented their findings to their local community.

This social justice approach struck me as an effective and relevant way to teach mathematical concepts. The only problem? The community college’s math department didn’t consider it a math course. Although statistics was an accepted general education math course at institutions around the state, and the class used a valid inquiry-based pedagogical strategy, the math faculty nevertheless felt that the course needed to cover more algebra.

They weren’t exactly wrong: At the time, state policies required California community college students seeking to transfer to four-year universities to pass a college-level math course with an intermediate algebra (or Algebra 2) prerequisite. This was true regardless of whether they were pursuing an algebra-intensive major like engineering or physics, or a field like communications, counseling, or political science that doesn’t rely on algebra.