Programs

Just as voting rights for southern African Americans became a reality when sharecroppers asserted their constitutional rights and pressured the federal government, the Algebra Project believes that a similar grassroots efforts will be necessary to ensure a quality education for all students. This ambitious work includes several programs that involve students, teachers, parents and community organizers, as well as mathematicians, academics and policy makers.

 

Curricula Research and Development

The Algebra Project develops and implements curricular interventions that build on experiences students find interesting--and understand intuitively--to help them shift from arithmetic to algebraic thinking.

A ride on a subway, a trip on a bus, or a community walking tour become the basis for understanding displacements, while stories about "making do" help students grasp the difference between equivalence and equality. The concepts of displacements and equivalence then provide a new approach to understanding integers.
 
Teachers use inquiry-based teaching strategies that build on students' concrete experiences, then coach them to construct new experiences that will help them find answers by asking increasingly sophisticated questions.

Transition Curriculum

Designed for use in 6th or 7th grade classrooms, the Transition Curriculum helps students make the shift in their conceptual thinking from arithmetic to algebra.
    
The Algebra Project is a vehicle for implementing the standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics such as Mathematics as Problem Solving; Mathematics as Communication; and Mathematics as Reasoning.
    
The Algebra Project Transition Curriculum engages students in the construction of mathematical concepts. The curriculum helps students build their understanding of mathematical concepts through a Five-Step curricular process that begins with familiar concrete experiences and progresses to abstract mathematics:


1. Participate in a physical event
2. Make pictorial (graphic) representations or models of the event
3. Discuss and write about the event in intuitive language(s)
4. Discuss and write about the event in structured language (identify key features)
5. Develop symbolic representations for the key features of the event, make presentations to the class and apply these representations.
The Algebra Project Transition curriculum consists of five units which relate to some of the big ideas in algebra such as equivalence, substitution, comparison, addition and subtraction of integers. 

High School Algebra and Geometry

The Algebra Project is producing a high school curriculum with funding from the National Science Foundation's Instructional Materials Development, GE Foundation’s fund for math excellence, and other sources. The curriculum's empirical learning methods and careful analysis of participant's language ground it solidly in recent instructional research.

The curriculum has improved student scores on traditional state-administered standardized tests. At the first year trial at Lanier High School in Jackson, MS, 55% of the students following this curriculum passed the Mississippi Algebra I Examination in their first sitting, compared with the 40% of students following the regular course.

Advisors for the National Science Foundation grant work are:

* Alan Schoenfeld, University of California at Berkeley
* Ed Dubinsky, Kent State
* Florence Fasanelli, American Association for the Advancement of Science
* Uri Treisman, University of Texas at Austin
* Don Goldberg, El Camino Community College
* Sylvia Boseman, Spelman College
* Carolyn Narisimhan, DePaul University
* Jim Fey, University of Maryland
* Carolyn Kieran, University of Quebec at Montreal
* Peter Braunfeld, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (Emeritus)

Examples of materials can be seen at http://www.math.siu.edu/budzban/TripLine.html.

Professional Development

Professional development and trainings are currently, or have in the past been underway in many US cities.

· Through generous support from the Vanguard Public Foundation:

·  New Orleans, LA


· In conjunction with the Algebra Project instructional materials development and short term grant for educational research for the National Science Foundation:


· Petersburg, VA
. Summerton, SC
. New Orleans, LA
· Jackson, MS

With NSF-supported development sites in:
. The Bronx, NY
. Carbondale, IL
. Ithaca, NY

Past NSF-supported Pilot Sites have included:
. Irvington, NJ
· Rochester, NY
· Proviso, IL


 

· Algebra Project work in the middle grades:


· Petersburg, VA
. New Orleans, LA
. Halifax County, NC (with North Carolina Central University)

Additional Recent Sites:
. Yuma, AZ
. Orangeburg, SC
· Lodi, CA

 

Additional development site:
. PS-200, Harlem, NY


 

· In partnership with the Young People's Project for Math Literacy Workers:


· Boston, MA
· Cambridge, MA
· Somerville, MA
· Chicago, IL
· Jackson, MS
. Petersburg, VA


 

· In partnership with Florida International University and Young People's Project for Math Literacy Workers:


· Miami, FL

 

. The Algebra Project Inc. National Office is located in Cambridge, MA 

 

Public Policy Initiatives

In its work addressing the educational crisis that is condemning African-American youth to societal margins, the Algebra Project has been exploring new ways to engage a national audience in this persistent problem.

The Algebra Project helped convene a meeting at Howard University in March 2005 to craft a national campaign with three objectives:


• Increase understanding of the current crisis in public education for students of color
• Identify and more effectively coordinate local initiatives addressing the crisis
• Position the crisis more squarely in civil rights terms and popularize the demand for quality education as a civil and human right


The initiative began with a small gathering of thoughtful individuals who have been active in this field. Participants included educational and civil rights activists, legal and educational scholars and practitioners, organizers, funders and students.

We hope to stimulate a fruitful discussion across disciplines that will help us to shape the campaign, to understand the basic legal and educational concepts and current thinking, and to sharpen our message.

State of Virginia Algebra Project Evaluation

To view research related to the Algebra Project's Intervention to Improve Student Learning in Mathematics, please click on the links to the PDF files below:


Algebra Project Program Evaluation


Algebra Project Program Evaluation Tables