Carnegie Math Pathways

Five Takeaways from 2025 Project Success TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways Convening

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Five Takeaways from 2025 Project Success TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways Convening

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This past September, Carnegie Math Pathways partnered with Red Lake Nation College to host the final TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways Network Convening in Minneapolis, MN. For eight years, the collaboration between Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) and Carnegie Math Pathways supported by Project Success has fostered meaningful growth in math teaching and learning for TCU students and produced valuable professional camaraderie. This year’s event brought together tribal college math instructors, administrators, and Indigenous education experts from across North America to celebrate that progress, reconnect as a community, and imagine what’s next.

Looking back on it a month later, here are a few of the key takeaways from this year’s gathering:

1. Math Is More Fun in Community

How often do you get to participate in enriching professional learning alongside your closest colleagues and then indulge in friendly, competitive game nights? These are regular core elements of a TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways Convening. Coming together year after year as a network around a common goal of improving math education for TCU students has helped connect TCU math faculty from rural campuses to collaborate, share and learn. Being with peers from similar institutions has driven innovations and changes aligned with the unique needs of TCUs. It’s also been a chance to just nerd-out in fun ways with passionate math educators.

2. Flexible Tools + Culturally Relevant Teaching Make Math More Accessible

Online learning is here to stay, so how do we keep students engaged when they’re logging in from anywhere? TCU instructors shared some of their innovations and learnings: Hyflex models, virtual tools like Amplify and Desmos, and culturally grounded instructional activities are making math more inviting for students across all modalities. Flexibility means students can participate in ways that work for them, removing barriers and boosting retention in classes.

3. Let’s Shine a Light on TCU Innovations

TCUs are transforming math education, but these innovative practices deserve more visibility. There’s a growing call for undergraduate math research rooted in tribal contexts and priorities. Exciting projects presented by TCU math research fellows on student engagement strategies, Indigenous math program design, online developmental math certification, and culturally embedded math games illustrated fresh, student-centered approaches and showcased the value of amplifying TCU voices in the broader canon of undergraduate math research.

4. Students Are the Greatest Teachers

Student panelists at the Red Lake Nation College Minneapolis site visit shared a variety of math stories and experiences, illuminating impactful practices and insights on what matters to them. The students spoke powerfully about how cultural games, real-life applications, and hands-on learning made a positive difference in their math learning experiences. Many shared stories about “relearning” math, highlighting the impact that patient, supportive instruction makes.Their suggestions, from math clubs to community projects, revealed how integrating math into everyday life and culture helps make the subject feel welcoming and relevant to students.

5. A Path Forward Built on Relationships and Trust

The TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways convenings have been a space to elevate TCU educator voices and center the needs and contexts of TCUs with respect to math education. With the end of Project Success, attention turned to future opportunities to build on this collective effort. Convening discussions emphasized reciprocity, trust, and aligning research with what’s meaningful to TCUs and the communities they serve. The Project Success partnership has set a powerful example for future collaborative efforts with and among TCUs. It has also demonstrated the value of expanding our conceptions of what counts as math. The future of math education at TCUs lies in blending traditional knowledge, cultural values, and contemporary evidenced-based practices to create a more relational and inclusive path ahead. 

The 2025 TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways Network Convening highlighted how community, culturally relevant teaching, and student voices continue to drive innovation and meaningful change in math education across tribal colleges and universities. Looking ahead, the commitment to collaboration, trust, and honoring Indigenous traditions will guide the next chapter of our work in creating accessible, engaging, and relevant math pathways for TCU students and communities.

 

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Expanding Access to Dual Enrollment: A New Pathway through Quantway

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Dual enrollment programs serve as a bridge for high school students to access college-level coursework, earn college credit, and gain skills and mindsets to prepare for college. Yet, these programs have historically been limited in reach, often serving a select group of high-achieving students. A newly funded partnership between Carnegie Math Pathways and Dallas College aims to change that narrative.

Carnegie Math Pathways was recently awarded a 5-year, $5.9 million Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant to collaborate with Dallas College, Dallas-area high schools, Motivate Lab, and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to develop and assess an innovative adaptation of Quantway for dual enrollment.

Quantway is Carnegie Math Pathways’ research-based, college-level quantitative reasoning course. Originally designed to increase access to and outcomes in gateway college mathematics, it is now set to expand dual enrollment access by offering Dallas-area high school students with a pathway beyond the traditional Algebra course to gain early exposure to college-level math. Quantway Dual Enrollment aims to increase college readiness and attainment through a rigorous math course option that is designed to support students with non-STEM college and career goals.

“We’re excited for the opportunity to collaborate with educators, parents, and students to create a new kind of dual enrollment course that unlocks postsecondary opportunities and offers a college-level math option that is better aligned for some students goals,” said Ann Edwards, Director of Carnegie Math Pathways.

Dual Enrollment Quantway will feature many of the key elements of Carnegie Math Pathways, which have proven to have a positive effect on student learning. Students will engage with real-world applications of math relatable to high school student lives and focused on personal finance, health, technology and more. The course will also use a collaborative learning approach that promotes having students explore ideas and learn together.

The dual enrollment course will also integrate strategies and practices through a framework called Cultivating Learning Identities, Mindsets, and Readiness (CLIMR) designed specifically to foster in high school students a positive identity as math learners as well as study skills and mindsets beneficial for college-level coursework.

“We are excited to continue working together with Carnegie Math Pathways and WestEd on this new opportunity to develop an innovative course that expands college-level learning options to more of our high school students and supports their success and advancement to higher education,” said Raghunath Kanakala, Vice Provost of the School of Engineering, Technology, Mathematics, and Sciences at Dallas College.

Year 1 of the study will focus on building and pilot testing the course, the instructor resources, and professional development. This will be followed by a full roll-out of implementation alongside an impact study over two academic years. An analysis of the findings will take place in the final year. We look forward to sharing updates and learning from the project as it unfolds.

 

Stay informed on this project and other research work that Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd is engaged in by signing up for our In Sum newsletter.

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The 74: For Free Community College to Work, HS Students Must be College-Ready. Some Programs that Can Make that Happen

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With the possibility of free community college on the horizon, the best way to guarantee the success of the free college initiative is to ensure that students who enroll are college-ready.

Programs like Carnegie Math Pathways’ Quantway and Statway can better prepare more students for college-level work and help ensure this success, argue Stanley Litow, professor at Duke and Columbia universities, and Tina Kelley, a former New York Times reporter and co-author, with Stanley Litow, of “Breaking Barriers: How P-TECH Schools Create a Pathway from High School to College to Career.”

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Carnegie Math Pathways Virtual Courses See 3x the Success Rate of Traditional Math Sequences

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We are thrilled to share that Carnegie Math Pathways’ new fully online courses, Quantway and Statway Virtual, are boosting students’ successful course completion by 3 to 4 times the rate of more traditional course sequences in math.

Uniquely addressing one of the key challenges of distance learning — social connection — these online courses leverage integrated video conferencing and digital analytic tools that help students meaningfully engage in learning, while providing instructors with targeted support to advance learning.

Quantway and Statway Virtual, in development since 2018 and launched in summer of 2020, reimagine online learning by thoughtfully adapting some of the most impactful elements of the Pathways in-class experience for digital learning environments.

The results? Students enrolled in the online courses are achieving success in these courses at the same rate as their peers who participated in the highly successful Carnegie Math Pathways in-person courses.

Designed by faculty with experience using the proven Pathways in-class approach, Quantway and Statway Virtual utilize an intuitive and adaptive digital learning platform. With the seamless integration of video conferencing, an additional external account is not required to enable collaborative, discovery-based learning that nurtures connection to peers, the instructor, and the course content. These elements are key to shifting students’ mindsets and deeply engaging students in the course, leading to improved student outcomes in the course and beyond.

“I think it’s huge that Quantway College Virtual was designed by faculty because the faculty are the ones who are in the classroom,” says Kelly Kohlmetz, math faculty and Pathways faculty designer at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. “We know what works in the classroom and have replicated that as much as possible in the online environment.”

These thoughtfully designed statistical and quantitative reasoning courses can flexibly support fully online, hybrid, or in-person instruction. Kohlmetz says, “One of the things I really love about the Quantway College Virtual class is that the Zoom [collaboration sessions] are built into the course. So the students actually work through the lessons together, as they would do in class — answering the questions, inputting their questions into the system, talking about their answers.”

And students are sharing positive reactions as well, such as Kristen Haner at SUNY Corning Community College who recently said the Quantway Virtual course was more rewarding than any classroom course she could take.

The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) is one of many institutions that are experiencing success as they deliver online courses to support their students remotely. RIDE partnered with WestEd’s Carnegie Math Pathways to offer a summer online transition course that helped more than 400 high school seniors and recent graduates prepare for college-level math using a custom course based on Quantway.

To learn more about Statway and Quantway, visit: oer.carnegiemathpathways.org.

 

LA School Report: Speed up the route to graduation with alternative math pathways

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In his op-ed for the LA School Report, professor of mathematics Scott Guth champions Statway as a practical and rigorous way for students to demonstrate quantitative literacy. He expresses what so many others in this arena have voiced before: neither the traditional math sequence nor traditional models of remediation are aligned to help students succeed as much as possible, particularly for students of color who are disproportionately affected by remediation policies. Statway, he says, is an immersive, collaborative way to address the inadequacy of existing math remediation.

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The Mercury News: Want a college degree? Here’s how to meet math requirements painlessly

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Cheryl Cowan was in her 40s when she lost her job and decided to return to school to obtain her degree. At San Jose City College, she was crushed to learn that because she didn’t pass the math placement exam, she’d have to take two years of remedial math classes before she could enroll in college-level math for her major. She gave up.

Fast forward to the present: she is now a 4.0 student on track to graduate with a degree in Organizational Studies and a minor in Anthropology in large part because of her Statway course at San Jose State University.

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