Improvement Science Delivers Results for Developmental Math Students

February 2, 2017

A Networked Improvement Community in Action

Developmental math has long been a gatekeeper to many college students, preventing them from progressing toward the dream of earning a college degree. To address this seemingly intractable problem, Carnegie organized a network of faculty members, researchers, designers, and content experts to create a new program aimed at increasing student success in developmental mathematics. They used the improvement science methodology and developed Carnegie Math Pathways®, comprised of two sequences—Statway® and Quantway®—that transformed teaching, content, and the structure of developmental math. Pathways has achieved stunning results: triple the success rate in half the time. In five years, 50 percent of Statway students completed developmental math and passed a college-level math course in one academic year, compared to only 15 percent of students in traditional developmental math over two years. Read how they did it.