Printer-friendly versionfocusing on mathematics and college readiness.
The story is a familiar one: A high-school dropout and single mother works the supermarket late shift. Motivated to earn a four-year degree so she can have a better life for herself and her 4-year-old daughter, she enrolls in a community college after earning a GED. Three years later, she still hasn’t completed the sequence of three remedial math courses required before she can take college-level math. Defeated, she says, "I just couldn’t do it anymore." For this student and too many others, the dream stops here.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and four other foundations are working to change the lives of students like this one. To begin this work, nineteen institutions in five states will participate in a Carnegie-driven networked community working toward measureable improvements in student success in development mathematics through the development of two newly designed integrated pathways.
The Statistics Pathway (Statway) is designed to engage developmental math students to and through transferable college statistics in one year. The Quantitative Literacy Pathway (Quantway) will be a new one semester course, replacing elementary and intermediate algebra, followed by completion of a college-level mathematics course.
Carnegie is inviting other interested faculty members, administrators, researchers and developers to follow this work online as it develops and to join in what they have termed a “joyful conspiracy” to turn student disappointment into student success in developmental mathematics. Carnegie has begun an online community that can be accessed here: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/statway.
“The goal of this new work is 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 limitations that they may have in language, literacy and mathematics and their ability, on entry, to navigate college,” said Carnegie Senior Partner Bernadine Chuck Fong, who is directing the work at Carnegie.
There is growing consensus that statistics, data analysis and quantitative reasoning are not only essential for an expanding number of occupations and professions, but are the mathematics needed for making decisions in modern life. The Statway will prepare students with the math that they need to understand and succeed in the world around them.
At the heart of the work is what Carnegie is calling the Collaboratory, an interactive community made up of these selected community colleges, researchers and public/private partners.
The Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, headed by Uri Treisman—also a senior partner at Carnegie—is working with the Foundation to develop a common set of instructional resources, collecting a common set of data and beginning a process of continuous improvement.
During the next two academic years, Carnegie will build an expansive network of community colleges. In this first phase, the Foundation will work with these selected, pioneering institutions to design of both Statway and Quantway. The Collaboratory will develop a base of freely available tools and materials for use by other colleges. Carnegie will also identify champions and leaders for rapid expansion of the Statway and Quantway in other community colleges across the country.
In addition, Carnegie will engage a broad base of participants including lead mathematics faculty members, campus administrative leadership and institutional researchers. The Collaboratory will create an opportunity for community college faculty on sabbaticals to become visiting fellows at the Foundation engaging directly in this research and development initiative.
Both the Statway and Quantway will include an intensive student engagement component within the classroom environment focused on increasing student tenacity, as well as helping students develop tools to navigate college.
“Developmental mathematics courses become a roadblock to success for our nation’s community college students,” said Carnegie President Anthony S. Bryk. “We are wasting precious human potential. The high cost of denied dreams and unfulfilled aspirations is unacceptable. Rather than a gateway to a college education and a better life, mathematics has become an unyielding gatekeeper.”
“We are committed to determining what is working for which students, and in what contexts, and to advancing the process of continuous performance improvement by working with community college faculty and institution leaders to garner and use evidence from practice to improve practice. And we invite others to join us to ensure student success.”
Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Lumina Foundation are joining in partnership with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to invest $14 million in this work for the first two years. All five foundations share a commitment to expanding college readiness and furthering student retention and graduation rates.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center that supports needed transformations in American education through tighter connections between teaching practice, evidence of student learning, the communication and use of this evidence, and structured opportunities to build knowledge.
Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic foundation created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to do "real and permanent good in this world." In education, the Corporation works to create pathways to opportunity for many more students by promoting systemic change and innovation in secondary and higher education.
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, the Foundation seek to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. Grants in the Education Program improve education by expanding the reach of openly available educational resources, improving California education policies, and by supporting "deeper learning" – a combination of the fundamental knowledge and practical basic skills all students will need to succeed.
Lumina Foundation for Education, an Indianapolis-based, private, independent foundation, strives to help people achieve their potential by expanding access to and success in education beyond high school.
