The cohort model was developed at Lanier High School, Jackson, MS.   Beginning with those students who took Algebra I with the Algebra Project in 2002-03, the project kept together a group of students, who took math every day in long periods.  The graphs below show the results at Lanier High School, where the first cohort graduated in 2006.  The features of the model are based on work at Lanier and are the result of collaboration among teachers, students, Algebra Project members, and university mathematicians and math educators (see COHORT MODEL).

The project has established six 9^th grade cohorts in four schools: Crenshaw and Franklin High Schools in Los Angeles, CA; Mansfield High in Mansfield, OH; Eldorado High in Eldorado, IL; and Ypsilanti High in Ypsilanti, MI. With this grant, the Algebra Project holds itself accountable to radically transform the lives of additional students who have so far not been reached by education reforms, and to stimulate the interest of educators across the nation in this model.

Goal for National Impact of the AP’s Cohort Model: to demonstrate how students who enter high school performing in the lowest national quartile in mathematics can accelerate their learning, pass state and national (ACT/SAT) exams, and be prepared for college mathematics.

Algebra Project Cohort Model core features:

• students take math together for four years (gr 9-12), in

• daily 90-minute periods, using

• Algebra Project instructional materials, and participate in

• locally developed & designed after-school and summer institutes for math and language arts.

Additional recommended cohort features:

• Local community groups support the intervention;

• Students receive group and/or individual psychological support from counselors;

• Students receive support for college and career choices;

• Students are introduced to the wider culture through group experiences.

Building community:

• Algebra Project networking websites in use by teachers, mathematicians and professional development specialists for information sharing, and collaborative development and dissemination of instructional materials;

• teaching community (local and national);

• cohort site network: opportunities for sites to collaborate, exchange best practices, and learn from each other.

Developing a peer culture:

• classroom experiences to develop self-efficacy as well as concern for other’s growth in the mathematics class;

• becoming Math Literacy Workers (teaching math to others) through the Young People’s Project (YPP);

• providing workshops for adults or younger students;

• math competitions.

This work is being supported by the National Science Foundation, Discovery Research K-12 award #0822175

“The Algebra Project is proud to be a partner in the district’s tremendous success,” said David Dennis, a community and site development consultant for Algebra Project, Inc. “Three years ago, when we began working into Petersburg, only one of the district’s nine schools was accredited. Today, four of the district’s schools are accredited. And those that aren’t have made notable strides.”

Overall PCPS Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) math pass rates increased by 23.35 points (47%), from 49.65% in the 2006-2007 academic year to 73% in 2008-2009.

Dr. Doris Williams, Community/Site Development Consultant  for the Algebra Project is quick to add that “success in Petersburg is the result of a lot of hard work on the parts of many entities, including the districts’s teachers, administrators, and partners.

With generours support from the Cameron Foundation of $1.8 million to the Petersburg City Public Schools to match the commitment of the District to support the Algebra Project’s programs in Petersburg the Algebra Project began work in Petersburg with the formation of a Design Team in 2005. The team spent the next yea planning the implementation of the Algebra Project and a K-16 Partnership Model for student success. Among the many collaborators that the Algebra Project brought together to design the model were local government officials, school personnel, faith-based and community representatives, parents, and faculty and staff from Virginia State University (VSU). This team is being re-tooled to meet the changing needs of the community, school and students.

The emerging K-16 partnership model has proven to be of mutual benefit to all of its key partners, but especially to the students of Petersburg Public Schools. One Senior summed it all up in her comments to teachers, students, business partners and community members at the district’s recent celebration. “I am going to graduate in May from an accredited high school,” she said. Fellow students shared her joy, chanting what has become the high school’s theme song, “Ain’t no stopping us now!”

Key components of the model include K-12 teacher professional development, summer academies for students, and community trainings and dialogues around quality education. In 2007, 29 teachers attended the Algebra Project summer institute conducted by Algebra Project trainers Jessie Cooper-Gibbs and Merle Harris. That number increased to 68 in 2008 and 73 in 2009 when former Algebra Project trainer Nancy Dennis and Dr. Leo Edwards joined the professional development team. So 80% of teachers who participated in the summer institutes also participate in the academic year follow-up workshops.

Over the past three years, four Petersburg High School math teachers have received intensive training from renowned research mathematicians via the Algebra Project’s National Science Foundation-funded Instructional Materials Development program. The teachers are implementing Algebra Project materials in Algebra I and geometry classes and contribute to the improvement of those materials with teachers from Algebra Project sites around the country, in sessions with the mathematicians.

Also included in the program is a community building program where local parents, community leaders and students are taught how to facilitate community dialogues on “Quality Education as a Constitutional Right” and their role and the role of the community in the development and implementation of a process that provides quality education for all students. Approximately 26 facilitators for these dialoques have been developed and are conducting sessions throughout the community.

Perhaps one of the most successful efforts outside the classroom work has been in creating venues, facilitating dialogue, and building bridges between VSU and the school district. Multiple departments at the university have come together to provide services to PCPS students and teachers that they had not provided previously. For example, this summer, VSU provided a summer bridge program for PCPS students. This is an important development given the fact that the university in the past has enrolled very few students from Petersburg and engaged virtually none of its students in its summer programs.

More importantly, VSU has engaged faculty across disciplines in an emerging K-16 Partnership Model. Faculty from the Psychology Department, the Math Department, the School of Education and the Institute for Race Relations have all committed to building a long-term relationship with the school district and to working with the district and the Algebra Project to get PCPS students into the STEM pipeline.

VSU has consistently expressed an interest in incorporating the Algebra Project pedagogy into its freshman algebra courses.  To that end, the Algebra Project engaged Bill Crombie (one of the original group that worked with Bob Moses to found the Algebra Project, a developer of the Algebra Project curriculum, and presently a lead Professional Development Specialist for the Algebra Project) to work with VSU faculty to re-design selected freshman math courses, train faculty members in the Algebra Project pedagogy, and design pathways from high school to college for students who otherwise might not have considered college an option for them.

VSU has also provided Praxis II preparation for PCPS teachers in need of certification and presented with Algebra Project staff at national conference. Future plans include offering dual enrollment courses for high school students. Finally, VSU has agreed to evaluate the Algebra Project’s work in Petersburg, to become a regional training center for K-16 partnerships and to offer up to six hours of graduate course credits for Algebra Project institutes.

The workshops in Virginia, MN, the headquarters and a central location in the District, were facilitated by Gary and Annie Lerew, a Grade 9 Math Teacher at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, NY.  The Algebra Project “Pop Ups!” workshop was the first ever district-wide PD workshop sponsored by the Indian Education Program, and it provided Lowana Greensky with an opportunity to address issues about the education of Native students within the district.

Over the course of two days, eighteen teachers and several staff representatives from seven rural PreK-12 schools in St. Louis County were given the opportunity to experience Algebra Project methods first hand.

Gary Benenson with student at the Pop-Ups Workshop in MN

Benenson, Greensky and Lerew also traveled to Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet, MN, where they presented sections of the Mechanisms unit (Exploring pop-ups, and making pop-ups) to students, teachers, and three members of the Indian Education staff, attending the Gidiakimanongniwiigamig, (which means “Our Earth Lodge” in Ojibwe), a seasonal science and math enrichment camp at the college.   Participants included eight teachers, three Indian Education staff members, and roughly 15-20 students, ranging from elementary to college age. The teachers all commented favorably on the engagement of the students and the quality of their work.

Lowana Greensky, and her staff coordinated follow-up professional development sessions for teachers, including distribution of materials and also provided project coordination.  All instructional materials used in the workshops, including pop-up books, templates, and charts, are available for further use in the District.

Gary Benenson returned to St. Louis County in late April to assess the progress of the initial Algebra Project curriculum trial with teachers and Indian Education Program (IEP) staff, visiting six St. Louis County schools.  Four of the schools had already begun implementing the materials, a fifth school was to begin implementation during the Summer, and a sixth school expressed interest in the elementary science materials.  In each of the four schools that had already begun, Gary met with an interdisciplinary group involved in implementation.

Plans for Future Work

To support the ongoing collaboration with St. Louis County schools, Lowana Greensky and Darilynn Ronn attended the Algebra Project 2009 Summer Institute in Chicago, where they learned more about AP pedagogy and curriculum, and also began to develop personal connections with other members of the national AP network.  Several of the St. Louis County Schools have been selected as field-test sites for the Physical Science Comes Alive, an elementary science initiative based at City College which Benenson helps lead.  This provides opportunities for follow up with the St. Louis County schools over the next two years.

Date: 1/23/09

Dear Mr. Hung,

I just want to say thanks for the great semester in Algebra and Math Support. These past couple of weeks was really fun. For once I actually understand Algebra and to make it better is that you taught us in a fun way. I also like being a student in this class because in my last two Algebra classes I didn’t understand the math. That’s why I like being in this class because I understand the work. It’s not very hard but its not easy its just right and understandable. Thats why I really look forward to having your class this semester, the next and next year.
Thanks
Michael

July 2009

Dear Algebra Project Teacher,

I have been asked to write you a letter about my experience working with the Algebra Project curriculum for the first time. Let me tell you a little bit about how we got involved with the Algebra Project, what my first year was like and where we hope it’s going.

Our school serves those students who are typically underserved, and we have struggled to find both curricular materials and strategies to make math, particularly Algebra, accessible to those students.  Many of our graduates manage to get themselves to City College or one of the California State University campuses, only to have to take remedial classes for which they have to pay but for which they don’t receive credit.

Marcus Hung heard about the Algebra Project last year and got in touch with Marian Currell, now an administrator in our district, who had used the curriculum as a middle school math teacher.  Through Marian, and with the support of the San Francisco Unified School District, we were able to be designated as a field test site as part of the Algebra Project’s National Science Foundation, Instructional Materials Development award #0628132.  We spent three weeks in the summer of 2008 in Jackson, MS, learning about the curriculum.

We both taught ninth grade sections using the curriculum during the 2008-2009 year: Marcus had two (double-period) sections and I had one.  The students in our Algebra Project classes are almost entirely bottom quartile. The average California Standards Test math performance score for my group of 22 students, on a scale of 1 to 5, is 1.7.

Our experience working with the curriculum last year was a bigger challenge than we anticipated, I think.  The math is great, and the curriculum absolutely does not fall within the “mile wide and inch deep” stereotype of mathematics in this country. All of the math is developed through common experiences, which I think was very positive for my students.  Also, the curriculum doesn’t make any assumptions with respect to skills that students should have mastered previously (but didn’t).  I think that helped prevent students from shutting down in the face of difficult work.

Students who are engaged in the Algebra Project curriculum have the opportunity to develop profound understanding.   With this group, however, engagement isn’t always easy.  The modules are written by mathematicians, not classroom teachers, and the amount of preparation required to make the material accessible to our students was far greater than we expected. We spent a lot of time developing homework, additional practice and assessments and learned a lot about formatting mathematical notation. I found that my students worked best when I organized the material into small sections and circulated to work with them one on one or in small groups. By the end of the second semester, I was giving them a worksheet every day with the day’s activities broken down for them and spending little or no time on direct instruction or large group activities. I also learned that they all had good days and bad days, and I had to figure out when to put pressure on them to work and when to back off. I think that in some ways, I learned a lot more than my students did this year.

So is the Algebra Project working?  We don’t know yet. Certainly it is too soon to say it’s not working.  Anecdotally, I can say that attendance in my Algebra Project class was much better than in my more traditional Algebra class, and homework production was better too.  I have noticed some of my students developing some critical thinking skills that I don’t think would have emerged with a more traditional curriculum. They also had enough confidence in their understanding of some of the topics we studied to challenge sample questions when we reviewed for the standardized tests.

One thing I realized as the year went on is that this kind of change will take a long time to implement and an even longer time to assess. More than simply changing the curricular materials by switching textbooks, we are changing the culture of mathematics at our school, at least for a small group of students. Some of my students are finding that through the Algebra Project, they are able to access math with greater understanding than they had before. For some of them, the year was really about creating a community in which they felt safe to work. While they may not have learned as much math as I had hoped, I did see a positive change in their attitude toward work by the end of the year, so I feel like we were successful at least in achieving that.

Last year was a difficult, challenging, frustrating experience. There were days when I was ready to quit, but on the days when my students were successful I took far more joy in their success than in my more traditional classes. Overall, I think the struggle was worth all of our efforts, and I am looking forward to tackling Geometry with the same group of students this year (2009-2010).

Please feel free to contact me if I can help in any way as you work through the first year of the curriculum.

Ann Lyon
Thurgood Marshall Academic High School
lyona [ at ] sfusd.edu