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Advancing Equity in Math Classrooms: What We Mean When We Say ‘Reimagine Math Teaching and Learning’

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Advancing Equity in Math Classrooms: What We Mean When We Say ‘Reimagine Math Teaching and Learning’

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A little over a year after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, we’re reflecting on the commitment to equity we reaffirmed in our statement after their deaths. We continue to believe that “educated citizens are key to a just and equitable society.” Yet we continue to see persistent barriers to math education that impact who has access to and succeeds in postsecondary education. These barriers continue to hold back students—especially Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and low-income students—from reaching their full potential not just in college and the workforce but as citizens. Students can earn higher salaries with a degree, but what more could they accomplish equipped with and empowered by a firm grasp of statistical or quantitative reasoning? What systems, institutions, or policies could they make more just or transform to benefit their communities?

Our contribution to the fight to make math education more equitable has been proving that all students, regardless of demographics, can succeed directly in college-level math, saving students time, money, and morale. But the impact of high quality math education can be so much more far-reaching than the degree our students earn. It can influence decisions big and small that affect our lives and those around us, from choosing a credit card to evaluating climate change data.

Developed over the course of our first 10 years of operation, here are some of the components of high quality math education that we’ve learned can not only make student success in math and college more equitable but can make math an empowering tool for students to grow self-sufficiency and to advocate for themselves in their lives.

Culturally relevant curricula

When students see themselves in culturally relevant curricula, they can gain a firmer understanding of how math can be applied to the real world and how they can use it to empower themselves and their communities. It also reaffirms the reality that their lived experiences have a place in their math classrooms, despite what previous math learning experiences may have led them to believe.

Too often, “rigor” in math is associated with abstract, decontextualized algebra or calculus content. But if, instead, rigorous math challenges students to be involved in their own learning and to think critically, then what we think of as rigorous math should include contextualized statistical and quantitative reasoning. Positioning algebra and calculus as the gold standard of mathematical rigor reinforces dominant narratives about ability and race by framing inequitable experiences and outcomes as meritocratic. 1 2

By providing content that is more accessible (yet no less rigorous than algebra or calculus), students can begin to see how they are capable of excelling in complex math. Jennifer Morris, a Quantway instructor at the College of Menominee Nation, which in any given semester serves students representing 12 to 16 different Native American tribes, summed it up this way: “Students know that they’re not represented in the textbooks, and they’ve known it all along. But until they see themselves represented, they don’t realize what an impact that has.”

Showing students they’re capable of doing math

Social-emotional activities that promote growth mindset, or the belief that ability can be strengthened through hard work and the right support, are crucial to helping students unlearn the deeply ingrained messaging they’ve received about who is and isn’t a “math person.” We regularly hear from students who discontinued their studies because they simply could not earn the math credit needed to graduate.

One concrete way we help foster students’ growth mindset is by assigning a reading in each Pathways course about the neuroscience of learning and how we can grow our brains. Following the reading, students complete a short set of activities reflecting on the article. In a randomized control study, 20% of the students in the control group withdrew from the course, compared to only 9% of the students who read the growth mindset article.

While research shows we can positively build up students’ beliefs about themselves as math learners and doers, we can’t rely on growth mindset alone to make math classrooms more equitable. Doing so can place disproportionate responsibility on students for their success when a significant portion of it depends on one key person–their instructor.

Showing instructors that their students are capable of doing math

Students benefit from a growth mindset but many may not come to believe they have a high capacity to learn if their instructor doesn’t believe it first. Racial and gender-based stereotypes about math talent and ability can have profound negative effects on minoritized students. This is why a significant, ongoing commitment to examining how we perceive students is essential if we want to see more equitable outcomes.

In Pathways courses, we prepare educators by helping them expand their thinking about what students can achieve. This is put into acute focus when they encounter the collaborative learning aspect of Pathways courses for the first time, wherein instructors play more of a facilitator role, allowing students to struggle productively to arrive at their answers. It’s not uncommon for educators to be surprised by how much students can learn without their guidance, especially in the online versions of our courses where students collaborate on Zoom, often without the instructor.

“The thing that surprised me the most about teaching (Quantway online),” George Hurlburt, math faculty at SUNY Corning Community College, said, “is how successful the students could be without the teacher being in the room. I really thought it would be a problem and that I would have to regularly join the collaboration to help the students get through…But they didn’t quit and that’s what impressed me the most about them.”

Reimagining math teaching and learning

Truly reimagined math teaching and learning ensures that pedagogy and curricula do not perpetuate the harm that traditional math models inflict, from stereotyping to tracking to cutting down students’ confidence. The devastation of last year’s killings and the gross inequities laid bare by the pandemic continue to challenge us to examine how to dismantle systems that hold back minoritized students.

We’re looking critically at our course assessments—can we better align them with the collaboration and communication skills students have built in Carnegie Math Pathways courses? We’re examining our social emotional supports—can they be more robust in the online space? And we’re finding ways to provide better scaffolding for students to have conversations about math lessons contextualized with social justice issues.

A generation of students is grappling with how to move forward after experiencing deeply traumatic moments in our country’s history. Everyone has a part to play in how we help our students respond. Making math more equitable and more empowering is ours, and we’re honored to continue this mission in the next decade.

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1 Battey, D., & Leyva, L. A. (2016). A framework for understanding whiteness in mathematics education. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 9(2), 49–80. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v9i2a294

2Leyva, L. A., McNeill, T., Marshall, B., & Guzmán, O. (2021, March). “It seems like they purposefully try to make as many kids drop”: An analysis of logics and mechanisms of racial-gendered inequality in introductory mathematics instruction. The Journal of Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2021.1879586

A Dual Enrollment Story: Expanding Postsecondary Options for Fremont High School Students with Statway

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Knocking down the ‘brick wall’ for students

At a 2016 board of education meeting, I represented Fremont High School’s Algebra 2 course with an image of a brick wall. In California, two years of math are required for high school students to graduate, yet three years are required for admission to 4-year colleges. So many of our students were failing or not enrolling in their third year of math, Algebra 2, that a brick wall seemed to me to perfectly symbolize the dead end this course had become for these students. Approximately 40% of students enrolled in Algebra 2 did not pass with a C or higher, and for those who came from our most economically disadvantaged feeder school, an alarming 80% received Ds and Fs. We knew that something needed to change if we wanted to give more students the opportunity to continue studying math and the option to pursue a degree at a 4-year institution after high school.

Launching dual enrollment at Fremont High School

At the same time that Fremont was searching for a solution for our Algebra 2 challenge, a local community college, Mission College, was exploring ways to both increase their college completion rate by replacing their remediation math sequence with an accelerated, credit-bearing pathway and to better connect with local high schools as a means to increase enrollment at Mission. Statway, the statistical reasoning math pathway from Carnegie Math Pathways, proved to be a good match for Mission’s own effort to reform remediation, offering an accelerated route for students to fulfill their college math requirement while engaging them in relevant content through collaborative learning. While partnering with Carnegie Math Pathways to implement Statway as their solution, Mission simultaneously connected with us on launching a dual enrollment program that would prepare students for success in college, provide high school and college credit upon successful completion, and also create a pipeline of Fremont students to their campus. Recognizing the opportunity to offer Statway as an alternative to Algebra 2, we were eager to partner with Mission to better prepare students for college and make a 4-year education a viable option for more students.

To successfully bring Statway to our high school, we involved a host of our stakeholders, including educators and administrators from our high school, partner college, and our school’s district administration. Over the course of more than three months, this team worked to coordinate who would teach the course and what the credit structure would look like. We have chosen to offer Statway as a year-long course. As long as students achieve a C grade or higher in both semesters of the course, they earn both high school and college-level credit. In our district, students are advised about which math courses to take based on their interests, but ultimately have the agency to decide for themselves which course is right for them, and they have the opportunity to drop if they feel it isn’t right for their goals. Statway has become an important addition to the math course offerings at Fremont because it provides students with an alternative to Algebra 2.

Since its launch, our dual enrollment program has seen various iterations as we learned what worked and what we needed to adjust in response to unforeseen challenges. Initially, the course was co-taught at Fremont by myself and an adjunct faculty member from Mission, but the following year I was hired as a part-time instructor at Mission in order to teach Statway at Fremont. Over the years, funding sources have changed and even our college partnership has shifted. While our school’s relationship with Mission remains strong, we’ve since transitioned our dual enrollment partnership to Foothill College. While changes have been made behind the scenes, the experience the program has provided for students and faculty, and the outcomes they’ve produced have been consistently meaningful.

Expanding access to 4-year colleges and making math empowering

Dual enrollment Statway at Fremont has welcomed almost two hundred of our students “back to math” and helped create access to 4-year institutions for many who otherwise would have gotten stuck because of Algebra 2. It has dramatically improved the way students perceive themselves—as capable of learning and doing mathematics. And it has created a culture of inclusion: I regularly hear my students coaching each other on note taking and study strategies and checking in on each other’s understanding of the material. Although the vast majority of our Statway students struggled in at least one foundational high school math course, 60–80% of students in the program have earned college math credit through Statway each year.

By helping us knock down the “brick wall” of Algebra 2, our concerted effort with Mission, and now Foothill, to offer Statway as a credit-bearing option at Fremont has helped us convince our students to give math another chance and significantly increased access to 4-year institutions. We are excited to continue offering Statway to expand postsecondary options for our students.

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.”

Read the Op-Ed

Transforming Math Learning Through Faculty-Driven Change at the State University of New York (SUNY)

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suny facultyFacing the challenge of math as a gatekeeper to college completion

At the State University of New York (SUNY), we are committed to ensuring that every student graduates and is well prepared for success in the workforce. We know that strengthening and accelerating student learning in mathematics is critical to achieving our goal. Our data show that mathematics, and developmental mathematics in particular, has been a primary gatekeeper to college completion for thousands of our students. We had to radically change how we approach mathematics education if we were going to help more students reach their college and career goals.

The search for a new approach

We began by working with faculty in our system to investigate new alternative approaches within our system and across the field. As part of our investigation, we learned about Carnegie Math Pathways and their quantitative and statistical reasoning pathways – Quantway and Statway. Impressed by the evidence of the Pathways’ impact in other systems and states, as well as the philosophy behind their student-centered approach and dedication to professional learning, our faculty made the case for adoption and our system decided to formally partner with Carnegie Math Pathways to bring these course options to SUNY colleges and universities.

Improvements in outcomes and the student experience

Our partnership with Carnegie Math Pathways has given SUNY colleges the tools to transform the way they serve students who need support in mathematics, laying the groundwork for increased graduation and completion rates. Originally piloted at two SUNY colleges, Quantway and Statway has now been used at more than half of the community colleges across our system.

Our Pathways-implementing colleges have demonstrated a noticeable improvement in student outcomes compared to students in traditional course sequences. Several of our schools have also made important advances in addressing equity gaps in success rates.

The relevant curriculum, combined with a collaborative learning approach and embedded social emotional learning support have truly made a difference to students. Our faculty are seeing improved attendance, engagement, and success in their classes. And students are telling us that they really feel like their math course has a purpose. Students have shared that Carnegie Math Pathways has helped them overcome math anxiety and helped them develop skills they never thought possible.

Our students’ success through Quantway and Statway is bringing both personal and institutional benefits. Students are achieving their gateway math credit within one year and building confidence that is supporting them as they advance in their studies and beyond. By investing in math instruction and providing math options that are meaningful to students’ studies and careers, our colleges are seeing improved and more equitable outcomes.

Building the infrastructure for institutional improvement

suny group photoOur partnership has helped us catalyze a system-wide network of faculty, administrators, and advisors committed to institutionalizing math pathways and supporting faculty learning and development.

Through this professional network, our educators have benefited from robust professional learning including Pathways trainings, mentorship development, and opportunities to share resources and support each other in improving practice. In partnership with Carnegie Math Pathways, we’ve coordinated large bi-annual learning forums that bring research and practitioner expertise together to improve students’ experiences in learning mathematics.

The result is a transformation in learning and teaching at 28 SUNY institutions that has impacted more than 20,000 students and over 475 faculty, administrators, advisors, and support staff.

Carnegie Math Pathways has also helped us build the infrastructure for our culture of student success that is integral to our corresponding efforts in corequisite English, multiple measures placement, and Guided Pathways.

Thanks to the early work of dramatically rethinking our math programs and our partnership with Carnegie Math Pathways, SUNY has begun making a real difference in our students’ success in math, and valuable strides towards ensuring the success of all our students.

Increasing Student Success with Corequisite Solutions

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Carnegie Math Pathways Quantway and Statway corequisite solutions are helping students succeed in gateway mathematics at 3-4 times the rate of the traditional math sequence, and in a fraction of the time—saving students time and money on their educational path.

Since their launch in 2017, Quantway and Statway corequisites have provided students with targeted, just-in-time supports to successfully complete college-level math in a single term while offering institutions the flexibility to implement in a variety of models.

Read the impact brief for an overview of our corequisite course design and the results to date.

Read the brief

Transforming Student Learning with Online Course Solutions

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Carnegie Math Pathways Quantway and Statway online course solutions are changing the way students experience learning math remotely.

Since their launch in 2019, Quantway and Statway online courses have served over 5,000 students at 50 institutions. In that time, they’ve demonstrated the same high success rates as in-person Quantway and Statway courses, even as implementation scaled in the fall of 2020.

Learn about our approach to online learning and the results so far in our latest impact brief.

Read the brief

Key Takeaways from a Decade of the Math Pathways Movement

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Earlier this year I had a wonderful conversation with three key education reform leaders on the movement to create math pathways. As I reflect on that discussion and particularly how Carnegie Math Pathways has helped shape this field, a few things stand out in terms of what has been most impactful and where there is further work to be done in reshaping mathematics to better serve our students and ensure success.

1. Data is essential to understanding the problem we are trying to solve, to motivating the will to make change, and to helping us identify potential solutions.

Thinking back to the early 2000’s, most of us understood from our own experiences on campuses that mathematics was a barrier to success. But it wasn’t until Tom Bailey’s work at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) in 2010 that the problem was put into sharp relief. CCRC’s research demonstrated that once students were placed in remedial or developmental mathematics, only 20% completed a single college level math class within three years. And this system of remediation particularly disadvantages marginalized students, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous students, and students experiencing poverty.

Developmental mathematics is a well intended solution to a very real problem; yet its design actually prevents students from learning and succeeding in college level mathematics. The system of developmental mathematics has stopped half a million students a year from graduating or transfering. Knowing this has forced all of us as educators to ask hard questions about our current approaches. It’s spurred us to examine our own institutional data to understand how these national statistics relate to what is actually happening with our own students. As we begin to understand the impact of this system within our own institutions, it becomes clear that the status quo is unacceptable, that a more just and equitable solution is needed.

By taking a more comprehensive, data-informed view of the system that generates these outcomes, we are better able to understand our students’ experiences, the factors impacting their experiences, and how best to address them.

2. Reimagining mathematics education so that it is a gateway to college success for every student requires systems change, not mere tweaks to existing structures.

Through critically examining the system, it became clear that multiple factors affect student success, namely, how students are placed into classes, the sequence of developmental courses students must pass before being allowed to enroll in college level mathematics, and what mathematics content students actually need to know to meet their college, career, and life goals.

We learned that traditional placement methods overplace students into developmental mathematics courses (often a sequence of courses) before allowing them to enter a credit-bearing college level course, financially burdening students and significantly lengthening their educational journey.

Data from the Carnegie Math Pathways showed that students performed just as well with college level mathematics content regardless of whether they were assessed as needing intermediate algebra, elementary algebra, or even pre-algebra.

In fact, Carnegie Math Pathways programs, Quantway and Statway, showed that sequences of developmental courses were not necessary. Students could succeed in college level mathematics if simultaneously given the right supports. This evidence has helped spark the movement of corequisite remediation, which is now in place in roughly half the states across the country.

At the same time, the math pathways approach has ensured that more students are learning mathematics relevant to their careers and interests such as statistics and quantitative reasoning. No longer are all students, regardless of interest or major, on a single trajectory to calculus inspired by our nation’s race to space against the Soviets in the 1950s. Instead, mathematics departments are following the advice of the mathematics and statistical professional societies in offering differentiated pathways that give students the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in their careers and lives in the 21st century.

3. Developing confident and successful learners requires transforming their learning experience inside the classroom.

The structural changes of redesigning placement, implementing corequisite remediation, and aligning math pathways with majors are essential to improving student outcomes and experiences. But they are not sufficient. Developing confident and successful learners and doers of mathematics requires changing how students engage with mathematics inside the classroom. Carnegie Math Pathways has shown that by actively engaging in contextualized mathematics in a supportive and inclusive environment, students develop deep conceptual knowledge, build confidence, and gain transferable hard and soft skills they need to be successful in mathematics and beyond. Because of Quantway and Staway, and programs like them, students are pursuing mathematics-based careers that they never before thought possible.

faculty at a carnegie math pathways event

Every student deserves the chance to succeed and advance, and nowhere can students feel an institutions’ commitment to them more than in the classroom. Creating powerful and effective learning experiences that help students build a growth mindset and foster a sense of belonging in class and in college requires investment in faculty professional development. For example, the State University of New York, through its partnership with Carnegie Math Pathways, has exemplified this commitment to professional learning by establishing a network of mathematics educators across their institutions who are focused on sharing learning and advancing instructional practice. And this investment has led to sustainable change for their students.

Our path forward

In the last 10 years, the Carnegie Math Pathways network of researchers and practitioners has played a leading role, alongside the Charles A. Dana Center and Complete College America, in launching a movement that has supported educators in transforming the educational lives of hundreds of thousands of students nationwide and abroad. While the Covid pandemic has made plain and even exacerbated the inequities in our educational system, math pathways continue to be a proven and sure step in dismantling some of these inequities.

Carnegie Math Pathways remains committed to our goals of improving math learning experiences for every student through innovative course solutions and by strengthening faculty development in equitable and inclusive instruction, and more. Progress toward this goal is possible because educators and administrators who are deeply passionate about making math teaching and learning more equitable are taking action.

So what actions can you and your institution take?

  • Begin by understanding your students’ experiences. Increasingly, many of us know the hard quantitative data about how our current systems serve our students. But knowing their personal stories makes the impact of those facts and figures all too real and impossible to ignore. Talk to them, interview them, ask them about their journey in deciding to come to your school, the process of enrolling, selecting and attending classes, and preparing for their future beyond your school. What do they hope to achieve? What are their pain points? Where could the system serve them better?
  • Then take the time to examine and understand the system that is responsible for the current outcomes so you can take steps to change it. Some key things you can ask include:
    • Are all the students who could benefit from college math able to take it based on your school’s placement method?
    • Do students have the option to engage in mathematics courses that are aligned to their majors? And how quickly is it possible to progress through their required courses?
    • Are students given the individualized support they need to be successful?
    • And are their experiences showing them the relevance of mathematics to their lives and futures and building their confidence as learners?
  • Reach out and connect with others. You don’t have to do this alone. Form a community of like-minded colleagues with whom you can share practices and ideas. Math faculty can connect with faculty in related disciplines to understand the specific mathematics skills students need to be successful in these disciplines. Faculty can connect with advisors to understand how incoming students are guided in selecting course pathways. Understanding each others’ perspectives may lead to new solutions for students. It may be that more can be done to prepare students for placement, that simple additional supports could significantly boost students’ identity and confidence as math learners, or that an alternative pathway would better meet the needs of non-STEM majors, saving them time and money and making it more likely they successfully advance academically.

We acknowledge that these tasks are complex and require time, resources, and commitment. Yet, the hard work has tremendous payoff. All of us need to understand our students’ goals and their experiences within the systems we create. It is incumbent upon all of us to create institutions and systems worthy of the students we serve. Together, the Carnegie Math Pathways network of educators has made tremendous progress over the last 10 years in transforming student’s learning experience and increasing success in gateway college mathematics. In the next 10 years I am confident we can do even more.

Q&A with Michelle Brock: The Importance of Social-Emotional Supports in Math Classrooms

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Pictured above: Michelle Brock and a banner hanging in her home office, visible during Zoom sessions with her students.

Teaching math has traditionally been about just that—teaching math. But as Michelle Brock, Carnegie Math Pathways Faculty Mentor and math faculty at American River College, notes, addressing non-cognitive aspects of learning can help math educators build a supportive environment in their classrooms that both reduces students’ anxiety and brings out their strengths.

Brock is part of the Pathways’ Productive Persistence Research and Development team, a group that develops and continuously refines the social-emotional support package the Pathways calls Productive Persistence. We spoke with her about the difference these kinds of supports can make for student success.

How has incorporating social-emotional supports into your instruction affected your students’ self-perception as math learners and doers?
It’s hard to say without actually talking to them how their perception changed but I can say how it played out in the classroom. What I’ve seen the most is the transition from students seeing my class as something they needed to be able to graduate—and not necessarily having faith that they could do it—to being able to redefine how they interpret success. I’ve seen students who would have success in math and still not interpret that as being successful. So being able to see that transition from students becoming resistant or tentative learners to becoming more willing to take risks in the class and more willing to risk not having the perfect answer, has been rewarding. I also think that was evident in the way students would realize that it’s okay to ask for help.

How do you know what sort of social-emotional interventions to use, and when, to best support your math students?
It would be lovely if you could just apply one thing to a class and it would work for everybody, but we’re all human. For me, I listen to how students are speaking about themselves as learners. When they speak to me about their troubles, I listen to the things that they say, or listen to how they speak about themselves in their groups, like, “You all are smarter than me,” “I don’t think as fast as you do.” We’re trained to think that learning looks one way. Some people only have to see something once and they can do it. That’s not me, and I don’t detract from that fact. I think demystifying that for students is important, so listening to how my students talk about themselves affects how I support them.

It sounds like that’s a really good strategy for you. Are there any other strategies you’ve found to be effective in helping your students feel like they belong in your class?
I think also watching other patterns in behavior that may not be so vocal, like attendance. In the past, I’ve heard from students that their anxiety got so high and they were so nervous that they couldn’t get to my class. So that takes a different kind of approach to be able to get them in the door. In the past, it might’ve been easy to classify these students as disinterested. Certainly, there are going to be cases in which people don’t perform because they aren’t interested, but I don’t think that’s the overwhelming narrative. I think there are other things in play that affect how students see themselves and how they perform. We need to take the time to acknowledge that we’re teaching human beings.

Yeah, for sure. It can be difficult sometimes, though, to get in touch with students who have been absent for a while. Have you found that to be the case, and if so, how did you overcome that?
I used to email when we were in-person. But what I learned when we went remote was that email may not be the best way. So, I’d watch for a response and if I don’t get one, I’d go to the phone. If I wasn’t hearing from them, I started calling them. I have yet to experience somebody say, “Why did you just call me?” It’s all been, “Wow, I’ve never had a teacher call me, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.” And so, just trying to figure out how to connect wherever I can. I also use a texting app on my phone (Remind) to reach out to both individual students and the whole class by text.

Suppose that beginning tomorrow, you had to teach your current math courses without any attention to the social-emotional wellbeing of your students. You’re strictly teaching math. What do you think your students would lose?
Everything. Seriously, everything. I think it’s easy for a student to fall off and not bring their full selves if we don’t even take the time to see them as their full selves, if we don’t take the time to reach out and understand if there are any barriers that we can remove from our space. We can help. This has always been something that has been in my sights since I’ve been teaching. I started tutoring when I was a senior in high school and math anxiety was always kind of high. Students had lots of stuff about math anxiety, but that still didn’t really get at the meat of what’s going on. It’s a piece of it, and I think that’s what drew me to the work around Productive Persistence, was getting a chance to name something that I’ve always felt in this space.

You say it’s a piece of it. What is that bigger thing that it’s a piece of, do you think?
I just think it’s just a bigger piece of just the whole psychology of humans. That anxiety comes from other things that are in play that we’re not always paying attention to. It’s those kinds of things that we, as math educators, haven’t paid a lot of attention to.

How would you say you measure the social-emotional wellbeing of your students?
I think from the surface and watching their participation gives me some clue, but the best way I’ve been able to measure it is through our Productive Persistence surveys (surveys intentionally built into each Pathways course that measure non-cognitive indicators important to student success at the start of the course and their change over time.). Generally, I judge that somebody is doing okay if they’re engaged and participating and they’re reaching out for help.

How has training and support from Carnegie Math Pathways helped you effectively apply social-emotional support in your courses?
It gave me access to other people who were working on the same kinds of things that I could roll questions back and forth with. And it created the space for me to really tap into my learner self. I’ve always learned something new every day I’ve been teaching, but this actually made me sit in my classroom and purposely put on my learner hat. That has helped me be able to recognize more quickly when students maybe needed a different kind of nudge.

It’s also been helpful to talk with people who are going through the same struggles with their students and realizing that it didn’t matter whether you were here in Sacramento—or New York or Georgia or Ohio—we’re all dealing with similar challenges. Being a part of this community is a chance to really get out of the silo of teaching. It just took the individualistic aspect out of teaching and made it more community-based.

Learn more about Productive Persistence

From the Network: How to Make Your Solid Syllabus Liquid

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The Carnegie Math Pathways From the Network blog series provides advice and lessons learned from our nationwide network of educators to benefit math educators everywhere.

Like many educators, you may have a printable syllabus template you’ve been using and updating for years. It’s a solid template and it’s been getting the job done. But did you know, there may be a way for you to modify that syllabus to make it more engaging and even help you build community with your online students? With the rise of online learning, especially amid Covid-19, educators in the Carnegie Math Pathways network are finding success with the so-called “liquid syllabus” to help their students feel supported and connected as they learn remotely.

A liquid syllabus is a dynamic, visually compelling, online syllabus that can be accessed, bookmarked, and read easily from a digital device.

“A liquid syllabus gives me the opportunity to embed pictures and a personalized video welcome message that can do wonders for humanizing my classes and encouraging my students to let their armor down and let me get to know them as well,” Leticia Contreras, Statway faculty at Hartnell College in California, said.

As you plan for the spring term, here are tips on how to create a liquid syllabus for your own online math course using examples from Leticia and another Pathways educator, Brenda White, Quantway faculty at SUNY Morrisville State College.

Structure Your Liquid Syllabus

liquid syllabus

As it is not designed to be printed, a liquid syllabus gives you more flexibility to add support resources, live links, and to creatively organize content for your students’ ease of use and quick reference. One example of this is the use of a navigation bar. In Leticia’s liquid syllabus, created with Google Sites, the navigation bar includes:

  • Essentials. Detailed information about her course
  • Goals. Course objectives
  • Resources. Resources for students including where to access tutoring help, technology troubleshooting assistance, and more
  • Grading. Grading criteria and tips for success
  • Policies. Statements on Leticia’s teaching philosophy and policies around communication, attendance and participation, late submission, and “netiquette“
  • Schedule. A day-by-day account of what will be covered in class

Throughout each of these pages, Leticia has included words of motivation and links to resources that may not be found or as readily available in a traditional syllabus.

Introduce Yourself and Build Connections

liquid syllabus sample instructor introduction

The liquid syllabus gives you an opportunity to introduce yourself through a personal statement or a video message, bringing a human touch to distance learning (especially important during this time of social distancing).

In her introduction, Leticia shares with students that being an instructor is her “dream job” and that her goal is to help students reach their educational goals. She also sets aside time slots to meet with her students virtually, and encourages students to reach out often if they need help, especially during the pandemic.

This is also a space for you to forefront your approach to or philosophy on equitable instruction, and support it with a video, such as in Brenda’s liquid syllabus.

Social-Emotional Elements

liquid syllabus social emotional messages

With room to add mixed media and multiple pages, a liquid syllabus gives you additional opportunities to bring social-emotional support to your students, encouraging them to persist in the course and to understand why the subject is important and relevant to their lives. Many students enter math courses with a belief that they are not a “math person” or that they don’t belong in the classroom at all. Your liquid syllabus can help set a positive tone and reinforce the social-emotional interventions they may experience in your course to shift those self-perceptions.

Throughout her liquid syllabus, Leticia incorporates videos explaining growth mindset and motivational quotes (like the posters you might find in a brick-and-mortar classroom) to encourage her students to persist. Both Leticia and Brenda used Google Sites to create their liquid syllabi, which is free to use and integrates with existing Gmail accounts. A search online will yield several other examples and hosting options as well.

As a living document that can change as your students’ needs change, a liquid syllabus can provide multiple ways to support students, particularly those learning from a distance. It can also give you as an instructor a flexible and creative way to connect with your students. For more inspiration, check out Leticia’s liquid syllabus here and Brenda’s here.

Sparking a Movement: A Look Back at a Decade of Carnegie Math Pathways

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From COVID-19 to criminal justice statistics, personal finance to polling data, math is everywhere, and it matters. It’s more valuable than just a course to get you the credits needed to graduate and it isn’t just for those seeking a STEM-related degree or career. To know and understand math is empowering, enabling individuals to make informed decisions and evaluate information critical to their lives, communities, and society at-large.

Ten years ago, the Carnegie Math Pathways brought together educators, researchers, and institutional leaders to form a unique network committed to disrupting the inequitable status quo system of developmental math education, which was failing half a million students each year and depriving them of a degree or certificate to advance their goals.

In the decade since its creation, this network has expanded to thousands of educators across the country who are collectively pushing the boundaries in mathematics education to create quality learning opportunities that propel students to and through college more quickly and with greater success. We’ve always believed that we can accomplish more together than any one of us can accomplish alone. By harnessing the power of educators who know their students and communities best, our national network has developed research-based and educator-tested innovations that change how we think about and approach gateway math education.

“Why would colleges want to make students take two years of remedial courses when people like me are proving that we can be successful by starting out in college statistics?”

For too long, students, particularly low income and those of color, have been required to take multiple remediation courses, costing them additional time, money, and often derailing their education completely. American River College graduate, Cesar Bernardo Torres, could have been one of those students, but his advisor suggested Statway, a Carnegie Math Pathways statistical reasoning course, that gave him the opportunity to complete his math requirement in one year, stay on track to complete his program, and transfer to CSU Sacramento.

Reflecting on that opportunity, he questions: “Why would colleges want to make students take two years of remedial courses when people like me are proving that we can be successful by starting out in college statistics?”

Our goal is to bring opportunities like the one Cesar had to the half a million students who are failed by traditional math education each year. From math pathways that provide career-aligned, accelerated learning options to thoughtfully constructed corequisite courses, and online courses, this network has proven that with the right support, students can be successful in college-level mathematics from the start.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that the program saved my education.”

And this success extends beyond students’ gateway math course. Carnegie Math Pathways students consistently earn college math credits at higher rates than their peers in traditional math sequences, leading to higher graduation and transfer rates.  Jacquelyn Lowe, a graduate of CSU Humboldt, sums it up best when she explains that taking Statway at Los Angeles Pierce College gave her the confidence to advance in her education and reach her dreams as a first-generation college student. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that the program saved my education,” Lowe said. “Statway was hard but there was so much support. I learned that I was fully capable of succeeding in college statistics. Statway did more than speed up my college career—it was the reason I graduated.”

These are just two examples of student success forged by a math class in which students’ connection to their class, instructor, and content are key. Developed by faculty, Carnegie Math Pathways courses bring a novel collaborative and community-based approach to math instruction that dispels the notion that math is simply a hurdle to overcome on the road to graduation. Instead, our course design, and the network of instructors behind it, are helping students make connections to the math they see around them, and to see themselves as capable math learners—in many cases for the first time ever. The result is students who not only pass their math class, but thrive in it.

Michelle Gay, a former Quantway student and graduate of Ridgewater Community College, describes a self-transformation that has been echoed by many Pathways students: “When I became successful at finding solutions I was amazed at the feelings of confidence that came with them. The world became less clouded, and I was becoming more assured of my ability in it.”

This year, we look forward to celebrating the accomplishments of our network over the coming months. We’ll share reflections from educators on what it means to be a part of the network, highlight insights and lessons learned on creating quality math learning experiences for students, and examine how our efforts have contributed to more equitable outcomes and opportunities for students in mathematics.

As we make it through an unprecedented academic year and look ahead to the next decade, we’ll continue to move forward, together, to create math learning experiences that enable students not only to advance their goals, but also to value the math around them, developing and spreading the confidence that math isn’t to be avoided or feared but appreciated and seen for what it is—empowering.