Dive Brief:
- California has 17 Summer Algebra Institute sites in communities statewide, giving students ages 11-15 in sixth through eighth grade a chance to bulk up their algebra skills before the demands of high school math.
- EdSource reports the institutes are funded by California State University and offered in coordination with black churches, welcoming students who perform at or above the fifth-grade level in hopes the support will help close achievement gaps in the local schools.
- The program is open to students of all races but a major element of the curriculum design is its ethnocentric focus on African and African-American heritage, tracing math back to its origin in Africa and moving from there.
Dive Insight:
For many years, the black-white achievement gap was shrinking, but in the 1990s it stalled. The transition to the Common Core State Standards and their associated tests — more rigorous and administered, for the most part, on computers — have increased the achievement gaps among advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Black and Latino students, those from low-income families, and students who don’t speak English have been disproportionately impacted by the switch, a not-uncommon finding with the introduction of new tests, which supports the idea that these students are coached up to barely passing, rather than taught the deeper comprehension their wealthier, white, English-speaking peers learn to master.
Colleges have incorporated summer bridge programs before the start of the fall semester to help recent high school grads get ready for college-level coursework. Given the success of some of these programs, a similar model for the transition from middle school to high school math may be worth replicating.