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

5:00 AM on 02/01/2010

Omo Moses could be called a product of activism. His parents were both civil rights leaders in Mississippi during the 1960s, then relocated to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. From there, they moved to Tanzania where Moses was born. His full name, Omowale, is the same name the people of Nigeria gave to Malcolm X when the civil rights leader journeyed there. This is a fact Moses would later learn on his own.

“I said [to my parents], ‘Why didn’t ya’ll tell me this?’” Moses said, laughing. “I might’ve felt a lot better about it.”

Moses’ parents eventually moved back to the U.S., where his dad Bob Moses, received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.” His father started the Algebra Project, a program that helps low-income and minority students attain mathematical skills needed for college. Omo Moses and his siblings automatically became a part of the project, too.

“As early as eighth grade, we were tutoring kids,” the 37-year-old said.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Moses helped create a similar program in 1996 called the Young People’s Project, where students empower other students through math. Each year, the organization trains and employs 500 high school and college students (through a small stipend) to teach math to 5,000 elementary- and middle-school students and community members from Mississippi to California.

“What we exemplify is the type of work that young people can do to accelerate themselves and support other young people to accelerate themselves,” says Moses, the program’s executive director.

Moses and his team are also involved in other educational initiatives, including a group called Quality Education as a Constitutional Right. This initiative aims to create a national conversation about a proposed constitutional amendment that could guarantee that all children have the right to a quality education.

“Whether you get an amendment or you don’t, the goal is about shifting education,” Moses said. “No matter how many kids we help improve test scores, as an organization, we still have to help kids who the system is failing.”

Moses speaks like a true activist, following in the path of the great men who share his name.

“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.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/328/index.html#algebra

Look for “Class Act,” and go to “Program Resources” to the right of the blurb about the show, with links to “video,” “stream, download, podcast” and choose depending on your web browser (you might try clicking on “video” first…)

We would like to thank the producer, Khadijah White; and our partner organization, the Center for Urban Education & Innovation at Florida International University’s College of Education for arranging and welcoming the PBS Now team to film on campus.

read article >>

When was it? July 24-27, 2008

Here’s a copy of the conf. schedule:

http://www.algebra.org/articles/APconfsched_20080617.pdf

For over a quarter century, the Algebra Project has been working at the forefront of a civil rights struggle against one root cause of racial inequity in the United States: math education. The 2007-2008 academic year heralded the 25th anniversary of AP, as well as a few other significant anniversaries:

150th Anniversary of Dred Scott v. Sandford

50th Anniversary of Civil Rights Act of 1957

50th Anniversary of Public School Integration of Little Rock 9

15th Anniversary of the Algebra Project in Jackson, MS

From July 24 to July 27, 2008 AP held its inaugural anniversary conference in Jackson, Mississippi: hosted by Jackson State University in partnership with Florida International University, QECR and the YPP, with generous support from the Willow Springs Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the National Science Foundation, donors and registrants.

The National conference sought to synthesize and mobilize the 25-year history of the Algebra Project for a broad national audience. The meeting provided an opportunity for AP veterans to reconnect, celebrate our work together and included participation of other groups and individuals. We re-affirmed our common vision, highlighting both current programs and other organizations inspired by the AP such as QECR and YPP, and used these to motivate and frame our future work. Networking among participants and mobilization of resources for the future work of the AP were outgrowths of these sessions.

AP started from one parent’s desire to see his child understand algebra in middle school so that she could enter high school and enroll in college-preparatory math courses. In doing so, he saw the need to change youth culture around math education – to get them excited about math – and to break down institutional barriers to a quality public education.

That is exactly what AP students are doing: overcoming obstacles and spreading the excitement to be in the classroom. How often do you hear your high school students say they want to take math – 90 minutes a day, five days a week – and fully attend all year long? Calculate the minutes of class time that students are engaging themselves and each other, becoming agents of their future.

AP currently seeks a national response to establish a fundamental right that every child be guaranteed a quality public education; and you are part of this conversation!

Thank you for helping us celebrate math literacy and youth action for a quarter century and beyond. Please consider making a contribution toward a student travel scholarship by clicking on the “Donate Now” link above, or join our email list, also found at the top of this page.

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

Yvonne and Wilheminia

    Though Yvonne and Wilhemenia worked eight hours a day, Emergency Relief Committee meetings were held in their apartments on week nights, sometimes late into the night, and on weekends in the early evening. For many months the sisters, on Saturdays, joined the small band of ERC activists in soliciting food in front of supermarkets for Tennessee blacks who lost their jobs and were subjected to threats and sometimes violence as a result of attempting to register to vote.

    It was at the sisters’ suggestion that black churches were urged to aid ERC efforts.

    Churches on the South Side of Chicago, where the ERC was headquartered, consisted overwhelmingly of southern blacks who knew the pain of racial insult in the South and could readily identify with and were likely to come to the aid of their southern brothers and sisters. The ERC project offered a nearly ideal means by which blacks in the North might personally, and in large numbers, become directly involved in the southern movement, which raised their consciousness with respect to their plight in the North.

    Roughly seventy churches answered the ERC call to donate non-perishable food items and clothing to the cause.

    Over a period of eight months, massive amounts of such items were transported by van lines to Tennessee. The churches also contributed substantially to cost of shipments South being covered by the Emergency Relief Committee. The strategy of enlisting the support of the churches was the key to the success of the ERC in support of voter registration. Later that strategy worked on behalf of the Freedom Rider movement. The churches were also asked by the ERC to support Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Yvonne and Wilhemenia helped spearhead the three projects. The Chicago Defender, the principal black newspaper, unfailingly carried news of ERC activity into the homes of blacks on a weekly basis.

    The June 6th, 1961 issue of the Defender carries a photo of Yvonne with newly arrived Freedom Riders in Chicago. Moreover, all major Chicago newspapers–the Tribune, The Sun-Times, and the Daily News covered ERC projects, as did Chicago Television stations. Both voter-registration efforts of the ERC in 1960 and its support of the Freedom Rides in 1961 received national television coverage, over the Huntley-Brinkley evening news. Thus millions of Americans viewed ERC efforts.

    In the opening years of the Sixties, from 1960 to 1961, the ERC, as no other Chicago organization, helped focus the spotlight of publicity on the struggles of southern blacks.

    Chicagoans by the hundreds of thousands knew that a Chicago organization, with the support of churches, and with support from people irrespective of race and class orientation in and around Chicago, was deeply involved in coming to the assistance of southern blacks.

    Such assistance in time was not considered rare at all. But not once, in all the time spent with the sisters, was their talk from them about their contributions to the movement. Yet no one was more responsible for the Sixties movement in Chicago than they.

The Birth of the Emergency Relief Committee

    Sisters Yvonne Stephens and Wilhemenia Evans were, in the spring of 1960, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), at which time they walked picket lines in support of the student sit-in movement in the South. The sisters recruited Sterling Stuckey to join in their effort and encouraged him and James Wagner, who became members of CORE, to attend the national CORE convention in the summer of 1960 where Earl Walter of Los Angeles CORE spoke movingly about reprisals against blacks in Fayette and Haywood counties Tennessee for attempting to secure their voting rights. Upon returning to Chicago, Stuckey and the sisters in July founded The Emergency Relief Committee for Fayette and Haywood Counties, Tennessee– the ERC– as a subcommittee of CORE. In order to send large supplies of food and clothing South, the sisters suggested that the ERC should try and win the support black churches in Chicago, reasoning that most church memberships consisted of blacks who had fled the South in search of a better life.

    The pain felt by southern blacks, Yvonne and Wilhemenia emphasized, was especially felt by those in the North who were apt, the sisters argued, to want to help those left behind. While the great bulk of the support did indeed come from black churches with lower income members contributing heavily to the cause, ERC activity, which made the pages of every Chicago newspaper and was aired over television locally and nationally, attracted a great deal of attention across racial, class, and religious lines. Support also came from individuals near Chicago and from as far away as Washington, D. C. World-class scientist Percy Julian, who lived in nearby Oak Park, Illinois, was among the financial contributors to the cause, as was Ethel Payne, the journalist who lived in Washington, D.C.

    While the response to the ERC cut across class and race lines, the community of ex-southern blacks in Chicago churches drove the relief effort, as the sisters thought would be the case. Writes Michael Gomez, chair of History at NYU: “The work of the ERC was in fact the model later adopted by civil rights organizations in Chicago in relation to the southern rights struggle…” Further, Gomez writes that historian August Meier and sociologist Elliott Rudwick argue that the ERC was “the most active” CORE chapter at the time, sending “about sixty tons of food and clothing,” over five months, to Fayette and Haywood counties.

    Yvonne and Wilhemenia not only helped conceive the ERC but went on, after the ERC had sent roughly eighty tons of food and clothing to blacks attempting to win their voting rights, to support the Freedom Rides. The ERC, in fact, was the first civil rights organization in the country to bring a large number of Freedom Riders North, after their release from jail, to raise money so that CORE might continue its part in the Freedom Rides. Among the Freedom Riders brought to Chicago by the ERC in June of 1961, were Rudy Lombard, Doris Castle, Jerome Smith, Bill Larkin, Julia Aaron, Dave Dennis, and Dr. Walter Bergman. The planning meeting for this effort, as did most ERC meetings, took place in Yvonne’s apartment in Hyde Park. The sisters also helped raise money for Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

    While helping the drive for voter rights in Tennessee was the signal achievement of the ERC, members of the organization, inspired by the example of Yvonne and Wilhemenia, went on to play a role in the founding of the Amistad Society, which helped prepare the ground for movement for Black Studies and other intellectual movements of the Sixties in Chicago and the nation. Tragically, the sisters, who were completely dedicated to helping others, died of brain anueisms while still in their thirties. But no one in Chicago was more responsible for breathing life into the Chicago movement of the Sixties, which largely sprang into being as a result of their work.