The Quantway™ Networked Improvement Community provides an alternate and accelerated pathway that will motivate and engage students with an innovative quantitative literacy focus in which students use mathematics and numerical reasoning to make sense of the world around them. The aim of the Quantway™ pathway is to promote success in community college mathematics and to develop quantitatively literate citizens. In addition to new curricula, the Quantway™ pathway includes an intensive student engagement component within the classroom environment focused on increasing student motivation and tenacity. These supports include the information and the skills needed for academic success as well as tools that will help students to navigate college.

The Quantway™ pathway will launch in January 2012 when the materials will be available online to participating campuses in eight community colleges in three states. In addition to lessons and student supports, the pathway includes MyQuantway™, online out-of-class activities and homework. These take the place of a textbook, which is not required.

Many community college students find themselves struggling unsuccessfully to complete multiple developmental mathematics courses that mirror their earlier failed mathematics experiences. Students are disengaged and unmotivated by courses they see as having no relevance to their aspirations or the world around them.

It is Carnegie’s belief that community college students will have greater motivation to succeed and persist if their mathematics study is engaging, meaningful, relevant and useful.

In Quantway, students will focus on understanding and applying the mathematical concepts needed to facilitate their quantitative literacy rather than memorizing seemingly disconnected processes and procedures, as is often the case now. In this non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) pathway, students who place into elementary algebra will go to and through a college-level quantitative reasoning course in one year. Students will use numerical reasoning for decision making, argumentation and sense making about real-world questions, problems and contexts of personal, social and global importance.

It is Carnegie’s belief that community college students will have greater motivation to succeed and persist if their mathematics study is engaging, meaningful, relevant and useful.

Representatives from eight community colleges in three states are working with Carnegie to develop a program that aims to turn around the alarming failure rate of community college students in developmental mathematics.

The selected colleges are:

The aim of the Carnegie Quantway Networked Improvement Community is to promote success in community college mathematics and to develop quantitatively literate citizens.

Georgia
South Georgia College, East Georgia College, Gainesville State College

New York
Onondoga Community College, Westchester Community College, Borough of Manhattan

Ohio
Cuyahoga Community College, Sinclair Community College

Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Lumina Foundation and The Kresge Foundation have joined in partnership with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to invest $14 million in this work as well as in another new approach to mathematics called Statway for the first two years. All these foundations share a commitment to expanding college readiness and furthering student retention and graduation rates.