2013 Best Practices
Exchange
Statway: Our First 2 Years
Jerry Wright & Paul Verschueren
Seattle Central Community College
Clover Park Technical College
October 29, 2013
Today’s Agenda:
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Why is Statway necessary?
Who is our target audience?
What is Statway?
The Traditional Pathway
The Statway progression
Side-by-side comparison
Evidence of Success
Key Learnings / what’s next for us
Groundwork laid / how to get involved
The Problem
• 75% of all students place in developmental math (pre-college math)
• Many have math anxiety
• Same math curriculum for all incoming students
• Curriculum is mostly a repeat of high school math
• Math sequence requires up to one year to complete
• Most students do not finish the required math within
three years
• Non-STEM students taking too much time, energy and
money trying to learn math content that they will never use.
Math as a gatekeeper
What is Statway?
•Accelerated pathway that provides essential pre-college math skills in
within the context of statistics
•Culminates in a college statistics course
•Intended for Developmental Math students (non-stem, non-business)
•Cohort Model (same students, same teacher)
•Developed by the Carnegie Foundation
•http://www.carnegiefoundation.org
Statway
10
h e ig h t (in )
Traditional
y
5
75
70
65
x
-10
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
-5
4
6
8
10
60
55
8
9
10
11
12
fo rea rm (in )
-10
Predicted height = 2.7⋅(forearm length) + 39.
y 
5
3
x2
yˆ  2.7 x  39
Benefits of Statway
• Students with a history of failure in math get a fresh start
• Topics are new to students; different from high school algebra
• A non-STEM student is not necessarily any less smart than a nonSTEM student
• Curriculum relevant to the future fields of our students
• Cohort model give students a sense of community and support
Nation-wide
What we learned
• Students get the “statistics” part
• Students learn at a similar pace
• Takes patience and understanding to get through the “math” part
• “I just can’t turn letters into numbers”
• Students in our SHS department lobbied for schedule-appropriate
Statway section
• Students recommend Statway to other students
• Students with weak math skills feel empowered
• Statway is more than just a new curriculum
Groundwork
• Carnegie Committee for Statistics Learning Outcomes (CCSLO)
• All major 4-year universities in Washington State accept the Statway
sequence as their intermediate algebra requirement
• All outcomes in Math 146 (introductory statistics) are covered in
Statway, with the same level of rigor.
• Several major universities accept Statway as equivalent to their
introductory statistics course (hopefully more later)
Partnership with the
Carnegie Foundation
• Invited to participate as a founding college for the Statway initiative
• Co-developed first version of the curriculum
• Participated with Carnegie Mellon’s Online Learning Initiative to develop online text and
activities for Statway
• Several Central faculty have worked at Carnegie as directors, associates and
faculty leads
• Current levels of participation include
• Teaching Statway and extending to South Seattle CC
• Working across the district to broadly implement embedded student success =
“Productive Persistence”
• Hosting an “alpha-lab” on Math Anxiety with
national research experts.
How to get involved
• Contact the Carnegie Foundation
• www.carnegiefoundation.org
• Bernadine Fong [fong@carnegiefoundation.org]
• Form a team of interested colleagues
• Email us!
• Jerry Wright [jerry.wright@seattlecolleges.edu]
• Paul Verschueren [Paul.Verschueren@seattlecolleges.edu]
• Continue the conversation
• Modify to fit your school’s needs