Mission & Approach - Carnegie Math Pathways

Our Mission

Empowering ALL students to reach their college and career goals by transforming their mathematics learning experience.

Our Community

Acknowledging that we can accomplish more together than alone, in 2010, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching initiated a network of faculty members, researchers, designers, students, and content experts to create a new system to increase student success in developmental mathematics. Beginning with an original 29 colleges our network has expanded to over 70 colleges and universities and continues to grow.

In October 2017, WestEd — a nonprofit agency working to improve education and other important outcomes for children, youth, and adults —took on the important work of cultivating and sustaining the Carnegie Math Pathways.

Together, the Carnegie Math Pathways network remains committed to working collaboratively to continue to improve outcomes for all students.

Background: Tackling the Developmental Mathematics Crisis

At community colleges, an overwhelming majority of entering students are sent into developmental math classes. Eighty percent of these students will never complete a college level math course. Traditional math isn’t working for them. Instead, it’s putting their graduation at risk, their career and life goals in peril.

The alarming statistics are now being replicated at our four year colleges and universities. Many assume it has to be this way. But it doesn’t. After analyzing the entire system that produces the traditional results and recognizing the key drivers of failure, the Carnegie Math Pathways network created an approach to address the problems across the system.

For every cohort of students entering into developmental math classes, eighty percent of these students will never complete a college level math course.

A Radical Systems-Based Approach

With an emphasis on the whole system producing the developmental mathematics crisis, the Carnegie Math Pathways network outlined a range of changes based on research and practitioner knowledge to design an instructional system geared toward success for all students. The Pathways system draws heavily on the following areas:

Accelerated, collaborative course structure

The Carnegie Math Pathways have designed courses that explicitly Shorten the developmental math sequence and reduce transition points to enable more students to successfully complete college level math.

Relevant Content

Statway and Quantway were designed to focus on mathematics that is meaningful to students’ everyday lives, academic area of study and career path.

Research-Based Instruction and Professional Development

The Carnegie Math Pathways provides robust support to faculty to become effective Quantway and Statway instructors through intensive initial preparation, ongoing mentoring, online training and forums, and in-person meetings.

Productive Persistence

Drawing on the research developed over many years, network faculty are and have been testing socio-emotional support strategies to help students persevere and succeed.

Networked Community

Faculty, administrators, and institutional researchers work in collaboration with the Carnegie Math Pathways to design, test, and adapt promising ideas to improve the mathematics teaching and learning experience for all students.

Relevant Analytics

Data gathered through common surveys and assessments provide analytics to support classroom instruction and highlight bright spots and areas to continue to improve across the network.