Improving On The American Dream: Mathematics Pathways To Student Success

Career College Central summary:

Community colleges are dedicated to the proposition that students can realize upward mobility through education and that learning is possible at any point in their lives. There, many students find success, but many others find that it eludes them.
Developmental mathematics is one of the most serious barriers to educational and economic achievement. Over 60 percent of all students entering community colleges in the United States are required to complete remedial/developmental courses as a first step towards earning associate's or bachelor's degrees. Then, to earn a degree, certificate, or license, students usually must complete at least one college-level math course. A staggering 70 percent of these students never complete the required mathematics courses, blocking their way to higher education credentials and with them, a wide array of technical and related careers.
It was this reality that prompted the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to develop a program of work that, after only a year in community-college classrooms, has tripled the success rate for developmental-mathematics students in half the time.
In 2010, after a year of fund raising and planning, Carnegie formed a network of community colleges, professional associations, and educational researchers to develop and implement the Community College Pathways (CCP) program. The program is organized around two structured pathways, one in statistics (known as Statway) and the second in quantitative reasoning (Quantway).

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