KQED’s Paul Lancour speaks with Dr. Moses about California’s decision to drop the algebra requirement for eight graders — and how his push for better math skills is an extension of his earlier work for desegregation.
Date: 2013-02-07

AP and YPP folk at ETS sponsored planning meeting, Dec. 14-18, 2012

The Algebra Project is partnering with the Young Peoples Project, Herb Clemens of the Ohio State University Mathematics Dept., OSU-Mansfield Campus, the Mansfield (OH) Public Schools, San Francisco Unified School District, the University of Michigan School of Education, the Educational Testing Service, and others to propose to the National Science Foundation’s Transforming STEM Learning (TSL) program a research study into the development of pilots for the sport of “Flagway Games,” games to enhance mathematical understanding, that establish systemic experiential out of school (informal), in school (formal) and computer based (technological) structures.  Such math based experiential activities will serve as platforms to create and sustain “collaborative and non-hierarchical” (1) communities of practice to promote students’ interest in, as well as expectations and mastery of, school math, student youth leadership, peer tutoring, community engagement, instructional materials development, professional development (PD) for elementary and middle grades teachers, PDPD for their professional and administrative support, and formative assessments of student learning, research into important mathematical concepts and documentation/evaluation of this initiative.

The Algebra Project (AP) itself foregrounds classes of High School student “cohorts” in low performing schools as creators and sustainers of four-year student communities of practice to value and pursue mathematics as a subject worthy of their attention (note about NSF grants).  AP also supports networks of parents, teachers, math educators/researchers, and research mathematicians, which have incubated the “Teacher Resource Materials” (TRM) and the “Teacher Curriculum Team” (TCT), communities of practice in their own right, to support and enhance cohort teaching and learning.

The Young People’s Project (YPP), highly influential in an original way, creates and sustains a national youth-led, youth-sustained network to promote, in after-school and Saturday programs, local youth-led, youth-sustained communities of practice to value and pursue mathematics as a subject worthy of their attention.

This TSL project seeks to demonstrate how products that originate from math research (The Mobius function) wedded to the cultures created by AP and YPP “Flagway Games” can create and sustain sports/math grounded communities of practice where young people value and pursue mathematics as a subject worthy of their attention, where schools and the communities that support them can share mathematics learning across generations, and where the expectations of all are raised concerning the reach of the mathematical platform needed for STEM mastery.

(1)    Bill Crombie, Algebra Project Director of Professional Development, will consult with ETS/PERC team members on the design and scheduling of a series of professional development coaching sessions for ETS personnel in support of ETS Challenge Assessments used at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY, with NYC teachers.

(2)    Consensus building and collaborative design work to move the project’s successful work in isolated middle and high school classrooms toward whole-school implementation from Fall 2012 on.  The focal event for this work is a one and one half day planning meeting to be held in Spring 2012.

(3) ETS researchers and AP also are exploring future development of formative assessments to accompany Algebra Project curricular materials so that teachers can better understand what students are learning in class and thereby improve instruction.

Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public School

Theresa Perry, Robert P. Moses, Ernesto Cortés Jr., Lisa Delpit, Joan T. Wynne

A passionately argued case for a new civil rights movement—centered on schools

Legendary civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses
invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellec-
tuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to
guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional
right—a movement that would “transform current approaches to edu-
cational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for
our children.” The response was overwhelming, and people literally
started organizing on the spot.
This book-emerging directly from that effort-includes a fierce, elo-
quent call by Moses for a new approach to school reform. He argues
that the crisis in public education for children of color won’t be solved
by bureaucratic fixes but only by a grassroots, popular movement
modeled after the civil rights movement.
Latino organizer Ernesto Cortés tells us about the realities of organiz-
ing based on the success stories of grassroots change in Texas. Lisa
Delpit shows us the key features of culturally grounded quality educa-
tion. Other eminent educators, historians, and legal experts lend their
voices to this groundbreaking book.

Theresa Perry is professor of Africana Studies and Education at Simmons College in Boston and co-editor of The Real Ebonics Debate.

Robert P. Moses is founder and president of the Algebra Project, as well as the winner of many awards including a MacArthur fellowship and a Heinz Award in the Human Condition.

Ernesto Cortes, Jr. is national co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation and executive director of the West / Southwest regional network, as well as a winner of a MacArthur fellowship and a Heinz Award in Public Policy.

Lisa Delpit is the Felton G. Clark Distinguished Professor of Education at Southern University and author of Other People’s Children, as well as winner of a MacArthur fellowship and numerous awards.

Joan T. Wynne is  Associate Professor of Education at Florida International University and author of Confessions of a White Educator.

Published June 30, 2010
$16.00 PAPERBACK
978-0-8070-3282-4

You can purchase the book through Beacon Press

Bob Moses. Credit: Michael Lisnet, Math for America

Bob Moses received a one-year appointment as the distinguished visiting fellow in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University for the 2011-2012 academic year, and will co-teach a course, with Tera Hunter and Peggy Cooper Davis, in the spring semester that focuses on education and labor policies through the lens of race.

“We are so delighted to have Robert Moses with us for the year. He has dedicated his life to expanded democratic possibility in the United States,” said Eddie Glaude, the chair of the Center for African American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion. “Indeed he is a living example of the transformative power that resides in each of us.  Our students and faculty are truly excited to have an opportunity to interact and learn from this historic figure.”

Moses used a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1982-87) to enter his daughter’s eighth grade class as a parent volunteer, teach algebra and initiate the Algebra Project, which uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure a quality public school education for all students. He is the co-author of, “Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights” (Beacon, 2001) and co-editor of  “Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools” (Beacon Press, 2010).

“Bob Moses’s presence offers our students a wonderful opportunity to understand the national significance of SNCC’s work using the vote to organize Mississippi sharecroppers to demand political rights,” said Glaude. “They will equally have a chance to learn about the national significance of the Algebra Project’s and the Young Peoples Project’s work using math to organize public school students to demand educational rights. Obviously we’re excited to have him join us for the year.”

“On behalf of the AP/YPP community and the SNCC Legacy Project, I look with great anticipation to explore all of the above through the CAAS visiting fellowship with interested members of the Princeton community in the coming school year,” Moses said.

See more on the Princeton University-CAAS website:
http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/news/archive/?id=6192

National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation study in 4th year; Junior year for AP High School Cohorts―the project and partners are currently in year 4 of 5 year National Science Foundation supported study to accelerate the mathematics learning of previously low-performing students in high schools in Los Angeles, CA; Eldorado, IL; Mansfield, OH, and; Ypsilanti, MI. Current evaluations are tracking student outcomes on standardized tests, as well as their conceptual understanding, and the development of a peer culture and positive attitudes toward further education. Further research will continue to take place under this grant from the NSF (DRL-0822175) to study the project’s “cohort model” in which students stay together for all four years, and schools and districts become more engaged in issues of student advancement from the beginning.  The goals include on-time graduation in 4 years, passing mandated state and national exams, being eligible for college, and, upon arrival at college, readiness to take college mathematics courses for credit (without remediation).

The Algebra Project and its partners have joined a growing multi-sector movement currently composed of more than 80 partners committed to working to recruit, develop, and retain 100,000 excellent STEM teachers over the coming 10 years. The movement is being led by Carnegie Corporation of New York the Opportunity Equation.

100Kin10 is a multi-sector mobilization that invites any organization, including but not limited to corporations, school districts, museums, institutions of higher education, foundations, federal agencies, professional associations, states, and nonprofit organizations, to apply their particular assets to creatively and strategically address the challenges of increasing the supply of and retaining excellent STEM educators.

The AP, together with OSU-Mansfield, SIU, and the YPP, has committed to:

Increasing Supply:
Will recruit and prepare 1000 math teachers over 10 years, from Algebra Project and Young People’s Project networks, to implement pedagogy proven to increase academic achievement of students who enter middle or high school performing in the lowest quartile on state or national tests.

Retain Excellence:
Will support experienced project teachers and university collaborators to mentor and coach the new teachers in the classroom, facilitate teacher groups, discuss teaching practice using project-designed observational teacher assessments, and review of their students’ academic growth.

Building a Movement:
By networking with current Algebra Project teachers/university partners and Young People’s Project (high school and college) students who already form a network base for recruiting and supporting teachers’ practice.

While professional development for practicing teachers always has been central to the project’s math literacy work, the 100k in 10 initiative provides a unique opportunity to partner with YPP, SIU and OSU-Mansfield in the design of Algebra Project infused undergraduate teacher pre-service certification programs―an extension into a critical, collaborative strategy for recruiting and preparing new generations of teachers who will represent increased capacity to serve greater numbers of students and schools nationally in the coming years.

The initiative was originally announced at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America Meeting in Chicago in June 2011, where President Clinton urged corporations, foundations, and other interested organizations to take part. At the seventh Annual Meeting of CGI in New York City last week, President Obama reiterated the imperative: “[Our future] demands that we give every child the skills and education they need to succeed. And I thank you for the commitment that you made to recruit and train tens of thousands of new science, technology, engineering, and math teachers. Nothing could be more important.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan yesterday lauded the 100Kin10 initiative, saying: “President Obama and I believe that recruiting and preparing 100,000 excellent new teachers in the STEM fields is essential for our students’ success in the 21st century knowledge economy. We need an all-hands-on-deck strategy to make this happen. I applaud the work of Carnegie Corporation and the Opportunity Equation and the 80 organizations including corporations, universities, non-profits, states, and districts that are coming together under the banner of ‘100Kin10’ to provide our students with a world-class education in the STEM subjects.”

Michele Cahill, Vice President for National Programs, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Co-Chair of the Opportunity Equation, said, “With 100Kin10, partners aren’t just voicing their concern, they are making real, measurable commitments to solving a complex, national problem. We hope their commitments will help mobilize others to join in the effort to increase the supply of excellent math and science teachers and retain them and all those currently in the classroom so that all students have access to rich, engaging, challenging science and math learning.”

More information, including a complete list of partners and their commitments, is available on the 100Kin10 website.