As a math teacher in the early 2000s, Adrian Mims saw few Black and Hispanic students succeeding in Brooklin (MA) High School's honors and advanced math courses. Disadvantaged students lacked foundational skills, study habits and confidence, writes Javeria Salman for the Hechinger Report.
Mims founded summer classes to prep students for eighth-grade algebra, honors geometry and eventually AP Calculus. His Calculus Project now works with roughly 1,000 students from 14 Boston-area districts, offering summer and after-school classes. Most come from Black, Hispanic and/or low-income families.
Students go on field trips to "Harvard Medical School, Google and to university research centers and engineering companies, where they are introduced to careers and see how the math they are learning is used in society," writes Salman. In high school, they're grouped with other Calculus Project students.
"Some states and districts are nixing advanced-math requirements, sometimes in the name of equity," writes Salman. There's a push to substitute data science for advanced algebra and calculus, and to "engage high schoolers in math by making the content more relevant to the real world."
Calculus is "the foundation of modern technology," counters Justin Desai, a math teacher who now works for the Calculus Project. Taking less rigorous math courses shuts the door on STEM careers -- and even fields such as law, he says.
The Calculus Project has fought to keep its students on the high-level math track, writes Salman. In July, some participants learned they'd been placed in financial literacy or statistics at Concord-Carlisle High School instead of calculus. Mims threatened to end the partnership and got all but one student into calculus.
The Calculus Project has added a college advising class for rising seniors, and "plans to help its graduates secure internships while they’re in college and network once they’re out," writes Salman.
Quentin Robinson joined the Calculus Project as a rising seventh grader, she writes. He learned that he likes math. “My freshman year, they tried to put me in a lower-level math class because they didn’t think I was capable,” Robinson said. He talked his way into Geometry Honors instead, and eventually completed college-level calculus and statistics in high school. A college junior, Robinson is majoring in accounting and data analytics at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts.