Kresge Supports Carnegie Effort to Improve Student Success in Community Colleges

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The Kresge Foundation has awarded The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching $2 million towards a project that aims to improve student success in community colleges. The award aligns with Kresge’s Education Program goal of expanding student academic success in higher education by supporting pathways to and through college.

In this new effort, the Carnegie Foundation is working to help community college students succeed in developmental mathematics. Currently, up to 60 percent of students enrolling in U.S. community colleges must take at least one remedial course (also called developmental education) to build their basic academic skills. The vast majority of community college students referred to developmental mathematics do not successfully complete the current sequence of required courses and many leave college for good.

Carnegie aims to double the proportion of students, who, within one year of continuous community college enrollment, are mathematically prepared to succeed in further academic study and/or academic pursuits, regardless of limitation that they may have in language, literacy and mathematics and their ability, on entry, to navigate college.

The $14 million initiative, funded now by six foundations, is building a networked community of practitioners, researchers, designers, commercial partners and students working on the development of two newly designed mathematics pathways.  The Statistics Pathway (Statway) will move developmental math students to and through transferable college statistics in one year. The Quantitative Literacy Pathway (Quantway) is a new one semester course, replacing elementary and intermediate algebra, followed by completion of a college-level mathematics course.

 The other foundations supporting this work in addition to Kresge are Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Lumina Foundation.

Contact:

Gay Clyburn
Associate Vice President
Public Affairs
clyburn@carnegiefoundation.org
650 566-5162