Projects and Impact
We engage in both Grant-Funded and Institution-Commissioned Action Research Projects. All projects are designed to improve specific student outcomes that will ultimately lead to college success. Topics focus on improving academic outcomes or college knowledge.
The SLAM Project
The SLAM (Students Linked and Aligned in Mathematics) Project provides equitable access to rigorous college-level math courses for those high school students who otherwise lack such access due to under-preparation or a lack of availability, such as that explained above. SLAM also creates systemic alignment for mathematics between high schools and community colleges, thus ensuring that all students who graduate from partner high schools are more likely to be accepted to college and experience successful college careers.
Student Outcomes
Students Served
Earned College Math Credit
To date, 84% (N = 1,889) of underprepared high school students who have participated in earlier phases of SLAM have earned college-level math credit. The program has a transformational effect on students, high school faculty and staff, as well as on schools as a system. Students who are deemed underprepared for college-level math are provided multiple levels of entry to a college-level math course. In addition to earning college math credit, students cite the experience of a college class while in high school as instrumental in preparing them for their transition to college.
The program also impacts administrators, counselors, and teachers as they learn the metrics used by their local colleges and universities to measure college readiness and how to offer opportunities and advisement to students so they can attain college readiness. Transformation also happens systemically, with the program requiring revised math course offerings and pathways at the high school that align to students’ post-secondary goals. To better illustrate the program and its promise, the following sections detail the evolution of SLAM from Fall 2013 to the present.
History
Phase 1: The South Los Angeles Math Project
The South Los Angeles Math (SLAM) Project was born from Dr. Lynn Cevallos’ dissertation, in which she examined intersegmental partnerships throughout California designed to address the remediation dilemma through academic alignment and found that these interventions were largely unsuccessful.
Instead of the typical basic skills remediation content that students find embarrassing, SLAM would give struggling students access to a college-level math course with embedded support that is provided for free, on the high school campus, and during the regular school day. By the end of the first three years, 165 students from six cohorts in three urban LAUSD high schools had participated in the project. The average SLAM pass rate was 77%, compared with an average of 71% for the same course taught at CSULA to college-ready students.
1
Phase 2: The Math Pipeline Readiness Project
The initial success of the SLAM Statistics pilot garnered interest from the CSU Chancellor’s Office and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to launch a STEM version of SLAM. With their partnership, College Bridge launched the Math Pipeline Readiness Project (M-PReP) to bring partner high schools and CSUs into alignment to increase the rate of STEM graduates in California. To help high school students graduate with a coherent strategy to transition into college, M-PReP also added high school counselors to develop, implement, evaluate, and revise a College Transition Plan (CTP) curriculum for SLAM students.
During this phase, 73% (N = 573) participants passed SLAM Statistics and 86% (N = 128) passed SLAM Pre-Calculus. Additionally, students at M-PReP schools demonstrated positive trends in Early Assessment Program (EAP) outcomes, with 11th grade students in the dual-enrollment SLAM Pre-Calculus course outperforming their counterparts. After controlling for prior levels, there was a statistically significant difference in performance levels between the SLAM Pre-Calculus and the traditional Pre-Calculus groups (F=4.08, p=.045).
2
Phase 3: Community College Expansion to Rural California
The first four years of the SLAM program served CSU-bound students in urban Los Angeles who were deemed unprepared for college during their junior or senior year of high school. The next phase of the project expanded to the rural communities of California’s Central Valley for students who were bound for California Community Colleges (CCCs). This opened the SLAM intervention to 91% of the student population at the partner high schools. All versions of SLAM included an asynchronous College Transition Plan (CTP) curriculum.
Building on the partners from Phase Two, three new CCCs and three new high schools joined M-PReP. One great success was the partnership between Dinuba High School and Reedley College. This Central Valley partnership resulted in a complete transformation of the high school, with over 33% of Dinuba’s 451 seniors earning college math credit in high school in the 2020-21 school year, compared to 0% of students earning credit though AP math during the duration of the project.
3
Phase 4: Schools Linked and Aligned in Mathematics
Now titled Schools Linked and Aligned in Mathematics, College Bridge is working to extend SLAM to 6-8 new California Community College (CCC) partners and 12-16 of the high schools in those CCCs’ service areas, positively impacting over 3,200 underrepresented high school students and more than 100 high school teachers. We are also working to fully develop, implement, and evaluate an asynchronous version of the College Transition Program (CTP) that can be implemented by SLAM teachers.
Additionally, the project will help College Bridge refine our tactics for working with high schools and community colleges in disparate areas, preparing to scale SLAM to more states during the next phase of the project and, ultimately, nationwide.
4
Featured Projects
The Math Pipeline Readiness Project
(M-PReP)
(M-PReP)
Creating a College Transition Plan
(CTP)
(CTP)
Improving A-G Completion
(Success Project)
(Success Project)
College & Career Readiness Initiative
(CCRI)
(CCRI)
The South Los Angeles Math
(SLAM) Project
(SLAM) Project
The SLAM Project:
The South Los Angeles Math (SLAM) Project launched in 2013 as an intersegmental partnership with LAUSD and Cal State LA to create an innovative solution to the college math readiness dilemma. The initial three-year pilot was funded by a grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
Student Outcomes
1,889
Students Served
84%
Earned College Math Credit
Identify Problem
68% of first-time freshmen at Cal State LA place in remedial math courses.
Develop Solution
SLAM researched the use of a dual-enrollment college Statistics course with support as an intervention strategy for high school seniors deemed at-risk for placing in remedial math courses using multiple measures. The university professor provided the college content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the high school teacher provided additional support on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The fall semester used Cal State LA’s MATH109 course; in the spring semester students transitioned into AP Statistics.
Pilot Solution
The initial 3-year pilot added one new cohort and one new high school each year for a total of six cohorts over three years.
In the first year at each high school, the teacher received 150 hours of job-embedded PD observing the college professor and students and collecting data. An additional 50 hours of collaboration outside of school time was provided with the professor, SLAM teachers, and College Bridge math expert team-grading assessments and lesson planning.
In the second year at each high school the high school teacher stepped into the professor role and a new high school teacher stepped into the support role. Both high school teachers were required to possess the minimum qualifications to teach at the university. The professor oversaw the instruction at schools in their second and third years. All grading continued to be done as a team in collaboration with the professor.
Evaluate
Key Findings from Initial 3-Year Pilot (six cohorts totaling 169 students)
- SLAM students’ average college math remediation rate was 27%. The high schools in the study had CSU math remediation rates ranging from 46% – 83%; Cal State LA’s rate was 68%. SLAM’s target was a remediation rate below 30%.
- 91% of SLAM students matriculated to college and 93% persisted from year one to year two.
- SLAM teaches students how to take responsibility for their learning. The final grade was mostly determined by a mid-term and final exam. Most students failed the mid-term. With each cohort we observed the same transformation take place where, after the mid-term, the students began forming study groups, seeking additional support from teachers, and studying during lunch and before and after school.
- Students must apply to be in the program. The SLAM project was designed to learn best practices for preparing students for college-level mathematics. Therefore, the student population must be students who are not prepared based on multiple measures. Further, the program requires hard work and students must be up for the challenges. We learned that an unprepared student who is placed in the program based on meeting set criteria will likely fail. Students, parents, counselors, teachers, and administrators must fully understand the purpose of the program and follow the Student Selection Process that was developed during the pilot.
- SLAM changes students’ perception of themselves. Students who entered the program stating they are “bad at math” learned that they could be successful with hard work; students who entered the program thinking they were “good at math” learned that they had found it easy in the past because they had not yet been challenged.
Data Collection and Analysis
Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to determine how well the students performed and why.
Student Selection Data using Multiple Measures
The quantitative data collected for student selection included course grades, SBAC scores, and GPA; teacher recommendations were the only qualitative data for student selection purposes but was ultimately found to be the strongest predictor of students success in the course.
Student Success Data
Quantitative data collected and analyzed for student success mid-term, final exam, and course grades were collected for quantitative analysis; data collected and analyzed included qualitative data consisted of field notes, student and teacher surveys, and teacher and professor interviews.
The evaluation report for year three can be viewed or downloaded below in the Research Reports section. See the M-PReP evaluation report for more information about the SLAM Project.
Revise
• In year one, 75% of students passed the college class with all students reporting positively on their experience. We learned that the college course and AP Statistics were divergent in their approach and the positive affects the students reported from MATH 109 dissolved over time in AP Statistics. We changed the second semester into using the statistics learned from semester one to conduct a group research project.
• Year two saw a decrease in pass rates that coincided with a district scheduling malfunction that placed students in the program who had the minimum qualifications but had not applied nor attended the student and parent orientation sessions. We modeled a formal student selection process on best practices and made the student and parent orientation mandatory.
• In year three we learned that the teacher-teacher version to the job-embedded PD used in year two was not working. The alternative allowed a trained teacher-new teacher combination in place of the professor-teacher model. The newly trained teachers were not ready to train new teachers so that model was eliminated. The programmatic components were stabilizing with 82% of students passing with similar outcome across sites.
“I grew a lot - probably more than in my last ten years of teaching.”
~ SLAM Math Teacher
It helped me experience what a real college course would be like. The responsibility of showing up on time, having assignments ready, and being “present” in the class, is on me and only me.
~SLAM Student