Building Math Pathways to Programs of Study

Statewide initiatives play a critical role in creating the conditions that enable colleges and universities to make mathematics pathways a reality. Therefore, the Dana Center’s primary strategy for achieving the goal of serving all students is to support systemic statewide work to implement the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model at scale.

Six States Lead the Way

The Dana Center and Complete College America (CCA) jointly launched Building Math Pathways to Programs of Study in 2014 as the first initiative in the country to support multiple states to implement mathematics pathways. Six states from the CCA Alliance of States were selected through a competitive application process to receive technical assistance from the Dana Center and CCA over two years.

Each state convened mathematics faculty leaders from 2- and 4-year institutions to work with policy representatives through a state-level math task force to establish a vision for math pathways in that state. After publishing recommendations, the task force leaders oversaw activities to support implementation.

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Notable Achievements from the Project

  • Colorado revised placement policy to allow greater flexibility in placing students into college-level mathematics courses.
  • Indiana aligned math pathways to programs of study to support consistent transfer and applicability.
  • Missouri’s flagship university established a quantitative reasoning pathway and has started a process to change a requirement that all students take College Algebra.
  • Montana and Nevada supported every public college and university in the state to develop a local implementation plan.
  • Ohio removed Intermediate Algebra as the prerequisite for college readiness, redefined “college level content,” and developed rigorous learning outcomes for a quantitative reasoning course.

A summary of the recommendations from the six states is provided in the report,  Momentum for Improving Undergraduate mathematics: Progress from State Mathematics Task Forcesview full resourceDownloadFile.

 

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Our Work at the State Level

Select a state to learn more about how local leaders are setting a vision for math pathways or read an analysis of math pathways work across multiple states.