Connecting the university to inner-city secondary school mathematics

Primus: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Jun 2002 by Case, Robert

ABSTRACT: The study of advanced mathematics in secondary school is an important threshold. Especially affected is the further academic success of inner-city students. These are minority and/or new immigrant students and those from low-income families. Many inner-- city schools lack a strong curriculum, often including no opportunity to study calculus. This article reports on a long-term collaborative effort between Northeastern University and inner-city high schools in Boston. This resulted in a wide-spread introduction of reform calculus classes in schools previously lacking calculus.

KEYWORDS: University outreach; educational equity; access for under-- represented students; reform mathematics in secondary schools; structural change in public schools.

MATHEMATICS AS A KEY FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

What obligation does an American college or university have to reach out to assist in the education of disadvantaged pre-college students? What role does a college mathematics department have in collaborating with precollege mathematics programs, particularly those involving urban youngsters? As mathematics is increasingly perceived as a serious social threshold, the negative consequences of weak mathematics programs for millions of young people become clearer.

Mathematics appears to have an especially privileged role in creating social equity and opportunity. Students who take a strong mathematics curriculum in high school have a greatly increased probability of success in college [1]. Evidence suggests that structural deficiencies in the mathematics curriculum exacerbate social inequality, while an emphasis on these resources will magnify empowerment.

An urban college or university can be a powerful engine of opportunity for those whose history, whether recent or longterm (in the case of urban African-Americans), has been characterized by a lack of access. A helpful trend just now is that universities are seeing themselves as more than destinations which are separate from the pre-college school system, and are finding ways to cooperate actively with the schools. The Mathematical Association of America's SUMMA (Strengthening Underrepresented Minority Mathematics Achievement) program as well as the work of Mathematicians and Education Reform (MER) are typical of this trend: they have encouraged college mathematics faculty to reach out to the population underrepresented in mathematics-based careers.

A MODEL FOR STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

This report describes the evolution of a mathematics education project in Boston which represents one kind of model connecting a university to an urban school system. It chronicles the ongoing cooperative project between Northeastern University's Mathematics Department and the Boston Public Schools. The project was instrumental in introducing calculus in seven inner-city high schools in Boston. The collaboration has been carried out over almost a decade. The project involves structural change: its central purpose is to provide inner-city youngsters with access to calculus in their high schools, an access previously lacking.

Participating high school students are from one or more of the following groups: minorities; new immigrants; other low-income urban students. For the most part, these students would be the first in their family to attend college. The population is especially significant, because as the 21st century begins, American society faces a challenge similar to that of the first decades of the last century. Once again, immigration is transforming the inner cities of the United States. This time an even more robust response is required, since the transition to a "knowledge economy" and the disappearance of labor-intensive jobs places a premium on educational success. Moreover, the challenge is complicated because it is connected to the task of strengthening inner-city public schools, as the nation strives to redress a historic lack of resources in these schools, affecting primarily minority students [12]. This challenge is described in powerful terms by Robert Moses, founder of the Algebra Project, as nothing less than an extension of the civil rights movement 171.

The deficient and damaging educational experiences of many students in inner-city schools of the United States have been the subject of articles and books in recent years, e. g., [4], [8], and [9]. The roots of these experiences in the instruction, expectations and resources of inner-city schools have been illuminated in [11] and [12]. Oakes calls these the technical, normative and political dimensions of schooling. And more specifically, a relevant account of how instruction changes when expectations are altered, irrespective of the U. S. setting, has been made in [2].

BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT

Outreach efforts are based on the conviction that urban educational deficiencies can be turned around, and that access to a strong mathematics curriculum is an important gateway to the fundamental equity won in principle by the earlier civil rights struggle. By the same token, the students in college-school programs will become leaders of their communities and the builders of America much as earlier immigrants were builders and shapers of America in the 20th century.