Math Initiatives, Grants, and Projects

FTEC Student Outcomes Dashboard

Grocery store sign advertising limes for .19 cents

Mathematics in Washington continually evolves and advances. Over the past two decades, higher education institutions in Washington, particularly community and technical colleges, have been dedicated to clearly defining and addressing systemic challenges concerning student math achievement and success.

Directed Self-Placement Editing Tool (2024 - Present)

SBCTC is contracting with David Lippman to develop an openly available DSP editing platform for Washington CTCs. If you would like more information or want to join the user group, email Dawn Draus at ddraus@bctc.edu.

Key Features

Interactive Front-End: Students will input details such as name, student ID, academic pathway, and prior math courses. Based on their responses, the system will recommend an initial course and provide readiness questions to refine the recommendation.
Customizable by Colleges: Institutions can tailor the DSP by editing introductory language, pathways, questions, recommendation logic, and more through simple text or HTML edits.
Accessibility: The front-end will meet WCAG standards to ensure usability for all students.
Data Integration: The DSP will include a back-end for result storage, accessible to colleges, with compatibility for exporting data to ctcLink.

Progress and Next Steps

December, 2024: First user group meeting to provide vision for tool development
March, 2025: David presented his current draft of the DSP editing tool to the user group
April, 2025: Faculty are exploring the tool and will provide feedback in the 3rd week of April
May, 2025: SBCTC staff will meet with ctcLink staff to develop a global test ID and explore data input options

Basic Education for Adults (BEdA) Curriculum Project (2024 - Present)

The Washington State BEdA Math Curriculum Project is developing an Adult Basic Education (ABE) course curriculum inspired by the successful Bridge to College Math high school course. Designed to engage adult learners, this course fosters conceptual understanding, reasoning, and flexible thinking while meeting high school graduation requirements and preparing students for credential-appropriate math pathways.

Project Highlights

Collaborative Expertise: Developed by a team of math faculty, BEdA faculty, and SBCTC staff, ensuring a well-rounded approach to curriculum design.
Student-Centered Learning: Emphasizes active learning, a growth mindset, and mathematical reasoning to enhance student engagement.
Social Justice Integration: Contextualized Canvas modules incorporate social justice concepts to make learning relevant and impactful.
Comprehensive Resources: Includes instructional components, handouts, activities, assessments, and a detailed instructor guide to support effective course delivery.
Accessibility: All materials adhere to accessibility standards to promote inclusivity for all learners.
Alignment & Placement: Course outcomes align with the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS), with recommendations for direct placement into appropriate math courses.

Math Placement Project Grant (2021 - Present)

Washington community and technical colleges continue to work towards more equitable placement practices. This includes moving away from standardized testing and focusing on high school transcripts evaluation and implementing guided self-placement models designed for students to reflect on prior experiences with reading, writing and math. Although colleges have made significant strides in placement assessment, inequities still exist, especially for historically underserved student populations and BIPOC students.

The purpose of the Math Placement Project Grant, generously funded by College Spark Washington, is to create a cohort of 6-9 colleges who are willing to share and learn from each other as they invest in examining and revising their current practices to ensure that all students who are currently eligible for placement into college level courses are being enrolled into those courses. Additionally, this work should support colleges in moving forward towards common practices that are consistent and transparent for students.

Resources

Bridge to College Math (2013 - Present)

The Washington Community and Technical College (WA CTC) system adopted a statewide agreement offering high school students the opportunity to be placed in college-level coursework based on their scores on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. As part of this agreement, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) developed Bridge to College (BtC) transition courses in math and English language arts. These courses provide an additional route to college readiness for high school seniors who do not score at a college-ready level on the assessments.

Bridge to College Mathematics (BtCM) is a year-long course focusing on the key mathematics readiness standards from Washington State’s K-12 Learning Standards for Mathematics (the Common Core State Standards, CCSS-M), including intentional development of the eight Standards for Mathematical Practices. The course is designed to prepare students for entrance into non-calculus pathway introductory college-level mathematics courses. It addresses key learning standards for high school, including Algebra I, statistics, geometry, and Algebra II, which are essential for college and career readiness.

BtCM qualifies as one of the designated options for the “multiple pathways to graduation” component of the high school graduation requirements, as defined by the 2019 Legislature.
High school graduates enrolling in the academic year immediately following high school, who earned a B or better in BtCM, are guaranteed placement into MATH& 107 and MATH& 146 at each of the 34 WA CTCs.
- The placement agreement was reviewed by the CTC system in Fall 2022 and extended in January 2023 through the Class of 2027, with no substantive changes to the agreement.

Resources

Corequisite Series (2018 - 2022)

Corequisite Launch Day 2022

For the past few years a number of colleges within our system have been experimenting with, implementing, and even scaling corequisite mathematics courses. Twelve of those colleges have been involved in a College Spark Washington Learning Community for the last 18 months where they have learned from and with each other in their corequisite work.

We have learned a great deal and are hoping to share that learning with other colleges who are interested in launching, restarting, or growing their own corequisite work.

On January 19th, there was a series of three meetings to share out some of our learnings:

Making the Case for Mathematics Corequisites – A chance to set some common language and look at data.
Mitigating the Obstacles to Implementing Mathematics Corequisites – A look at some of the common obstacles (other departments using precollege courses as prerequisites, scheduling, deciding on the “right” number of credits, grading policies) and looking at what other colleges in our system have done to mitigate these problems.
Let’s Talk Curriculum – A session especially for mathematics faculty to think about what it means to design corequisite courses as just in time college level support and how to find course materials.

Materials from February 2021 Learning Community

The February 2021 Learning Community meeting was focused on sharing learning. We had a chance to hear from Washington CTC faculty about the choices they made, why they made them, what they were glad they did, and what they were trying to change.

Helen Burn from Highline College mentioned the Curriculum Research Group Web Page has information about their Corequisite work as well as highlights of Highline’s data. Helen mentioned that this could be a place for other colleges to highlight their data as well.

Cody Fouts from Pierce mentioned the importance of communication to staff throughout the college (especially advisors), other faculty, and students. As part of their communication strategy, Highline has a designated web page, a single page flyer in PDF format of information, and a video explaining the course structure and for whom they are appropriate. https://math.highline.edu/math-classes-extra-support/

Dawn Draus from LCC encouraged folks to include Transitional Studies math faculty in their discussions about course outcomes and pathways. Their one page description of options and pathways highlights the success they have had with aligning their courses.

Andria Villines from Bellevue College noted how important making the case for corequisites was – both for faculty within the mathematics department and for faculty and staff in other departments. There is some great work out of the Public Policy Institute of California that reinforces the value of assuming students are ready for college level work and that our focus should be on supporting those courses instead of focusing on the precollege pathways. A three page overview of the study offers a bite sized look at what they found.

Winter 2020 Guided Pathways Retreat -Presentation

On January 16, 2020 at the Kitsap Conference Center in Bremerton, WA, Laura Schueller gave a short interactive presentation during a breakout session to a group of faculty and administrators who were working to implement corequisite mathematics at their colleges. The presentation focused on clarifying what colleges were trying to do and why and identifying some of the issues that had come up with colleges in their early stages of implementation.

Fall 2019 Corequisite Convening

On November 5, 2019, Joan Zoellner from The Charles A. Dana Center and Tammi Marshall from Cuyamaca College provided a one day follow up workshop to support colleges who had participated in the Fall 2018 convening in the continuation of their work. Colleges who were not able to participate in 2018 were able to “catch up” with a virtual workshop.

The focus of the event was continuous improvement. Colleges were encouraged to use a workbook to plan the ongoing process at their own colleges.

During the meeting, colleges created “Success and Challenges” posters as well as “Continuous Improvements” posters. Pictures of all of these posters as well as all other meeting materials can be found in a box maintained by the Dana Center: November 2019 Meeting Materials

Summer 2019 Guided Pathways Retreat – Presentation

On August 7, 2019, Joan Zoellner, a Course Program Specialist from the Dana Center, presented to a group of faculty and administrators from the Washington Guided Pathways cohort colleges on using Corequisite Math to address the Math Equity Gap.

Fall 2018 Corequisite Convening:

On November 7-8, 2018 some 65 participants from 16 Washington community and technical colleges (plus Eastern Washington University) joined several national experts and facilitators provided by the UT Austin Charles Dana Center in a 2-day workshop focused on a “deep-dive” exploration of math co-requisite model implementation–specific examples, logistics, successes, challenges, etc. Colleges committed to implementing co-requisite approaches in math at some scale.

It was a working session for the college teams in attendance; as one example, teams were asked to prepare and share posters documenting their current (or planned) pathways work with a co-requisite connection; here’s a great example from Clark College: Clark College – Washington Co-Requisite Mathematics Presentation v11-6-2018

Participants were also provided with a variety of examples syllabi from different co-requisite approaches at colleges across the country; here are just a few:

Precalculus Work Group (2020 - 2021)

March 19, 2021 Reasoning with Functions 1&2 Materials

The Dana Center has created a two-course college-level sequence designed to prepare “intermediate algebra ready students” for college-level Calculus. The newest update of these materials will be available this fall. The in-class activities and instructor resources will be openly available for use by any instructor, and online assignments will be available at a low cost on the Quaero platform through Access Alliance for Education.

Joan Zoellner, from the Dana Center, offered information and answered questions about the curriculum. Meeting Materials are available in a Dana Center dropbox.

February 24, 2021, 2:30-4:30pm: Rethinking the Pathway to Calculus Virtual Workshop. This workshop was designed for math faculty who are currently teaching, or will be teaching, college-level math courses that prepare students for Calculus.

Faculty from Washington CTC’s and BI’s participated in this workshop designed by our partners at the Dana Center. All meeting materials including a meeting recording are available in a Dana Center dropbox.

June 2020– February 3, 2021: The Precalculus Working Group met on the first Wednesday of each month. Meeting times were used to build on the statewide 2017 work to create common expectations for Math& 141 and 142. If you would like to be added to the list of faculty to receive updates, please email lschueller@sbctc.edu directly. The “working document” is open for comments: Course Description

June 17, 2020: The Precalculus Working Group met to start the work of setting expectations for the Pre-Calculus sequence. PowerPoint slides for the June 17 meeting.

May 27, 2020: Big Issues with Moving Math& 141 to Remote Instruction. We had a lively discussion with 34 faculty from 13 colleges. Notes from the meeting.

See Pathways to Calculus (2017) for earlier work.

Shift to Remote Learning (2020)

Due to COVID-19, in March 2020, as colleges were preparing to end the winter quarter and prepare for spring, faculty were forced to shift quickly away from in person instruction. The resources below were developed to help faculty in that transition and to support them as they worked to move beyond emergency remote instruction as conditions made it clear that many colleges would not be seeing students in person until late in 2021.

Resources

After talking to folks in office hours, listening to faculty at web meetings, and reading responses from across the state and the nation, it is obvious that one of the primary concerns for faculty is their ability to accurately assess the mathematical learning of students. Laura Schueller has tried to capture some of her learning here: Assessing Mathematical Learning in the Era of Covid 19.
Our Friends at the UT Austin Charles Dana Center are managing a collection of helpful resources from across the US; these resources are added-to and updated daily.

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has just released a set of broad recommendations for responding to the covid-19 crisis.

Launch Years (2019 - 2020)

"Washington, Georgia, and Texas are participating in an initiative to re-envision high quality mathematics pathways in high schools that prepare all students, especially those from traditionally underserved student populations, for postsecondary success. This “Launch Years Initiative” is facilitated by the University of Texas Dana Center, in collaboration with other partners. Washington’s role in the initiative has enabled the state to participate in several national conversations about the need for change and the opportunities for action.

Closer to home, a Washington State Steering Committee, comprised of representatives from K– 12, higher education, and workforce sectors, met for the first time on January 28 to begin discussing barriers and opportunities to improving alignment of students’ high school mathematics experiences with their career and college aspirations. The Steering Committee is charged with developing a set of public recommendations about the policy and programmatic supports necessary to develop and implement high school mathematics pathways across the state.

Each state participating in “Launch Years” is working with a single region to pilot different approaches to mathematics. In Washington, districts from the Spokane area (Central Valley, Cheney, Mead, Spokane, and West Valley), along with Spokane and Spokane Falls Community Colleges and Eastern Washington University, will be piloting Transition College Mathematics and Algebra II Equivalent courses in the next couple of years."

Resources

Pathway to Calculus (2017)

In fall 2017, 50 representatives from 9 community and technical colleges and 5 of the 6 public baccalaureates in Washington met at the University of Washington to focus on the STEM-Prep pathway. The workshop was co-led by Rebecca Hartzler and Frank Savina of the Charles A. Dana Center in collaboration with the Washington MPC co-chairs, Helen Burn and Barbara Alvin. Background information on the Dana Center’s national work in this pathway can be found on the Dana Center Math Pathways website.

Resources

Other Dana Center-sponsored “Pathway to Calculus” resources

Math Pathways to Completion (2015 - 2017)

Math Pathways to Completion built on the work of the system Math Strategic Plan and on earlier math related efforts such as Rethinking Precollege Math, Transition Math Project, and Student Attributes for Math Success (SAMS) to help all students succeed in math.

Math Pathways to Completion was a multi-state project (Arkansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Washington) focused on establishing and implementing a statewide vision for math pathways. The overall project goal was to make that vision a reality at all public higher education institutions, dramatically improving the success of students in developmental and entry-level college mathematics courses by clarifying and expanding appropriate math pathways for students across the state.

Resources

Math Strategic Plan (2015)

The system Math Strategic Plan aimed to transform math from an obstacle to an engaging learning experience that opens doors of opportunity. The goal of this plan was to help more students — especially traditionally underserved students — complete academic and professional-technical programs by eliminating barriers to success in math for all students.

Define and promote college-level math pathways tailored to students’ academic majors and/ or professional and technical program requirements, and align pre-college curriculum to those pathways.
Improve and expand academic and career pathway advising to help students choose math pathways that support their goals, while leaving the door open to reach even higher goals.
Extend math reforms to improve opportunities for students interested in a path from professional and technical programs to baccalaureate programs.
Engage faculty and staff in sustained work to bring improvements in math success to scale.
Expand the MESA program.
Clearly define and use metrics for measuring progress.

Resources

Washington State Community and Technical Colleges Math Strategic Plan

Re-Thinking Pre-College Math Project (2009 - 2012)

The Re-Thinking Pre-College Math (RPM) project was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a Student Completion Initiative grant to the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

A core premise of the RPM project was that student success in pre-college math is directly linked to students’ experiences in math classes, and students who experience more engaging, relevant learning are more likely to succeed. The RPM approach was built on the assumption that changing ineffective curricular structures and improving student support are necessary but not sufficient solutions to improving student success in precollege mathematics. The real lever of sustained long-term improvements in student success and learning in pre-college mathematics, especially the critical project goals of increasing student engagement in math and deepening students’ mathematical understanding, is improving faculty practice, taking a faculty-driven and department-centered collective approach to answering these central questions:

What math do we teach (and why)?
How do we teach?
How do we know students have learned the math?

Resources

Transition Math Project (2004 - 2009)

The TMP was a collaborative venture comprising educators from K–12 schools, community and technical colleges, and baccalaureate institutions; staff from the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Council of Presidents; and community-based stakeholders and business leaders.

What was accomplished:

Completed, approved, and published the College Mathematics Readiness Standards
Increased the use of math standards and expectations in designing classroom tasks, assignments, and assessments
Reached more students, especially students underserved by higher education, with clear messages on the importance of math for success after high school
Developed the College Readiness Math Test to provide a standard definition of college readiness in mathematics
Developed and disseminated a compendium of workplace tasks that clearly demonstrates how math is used in business and industry contexts