New Funding to Explore Innovative Skills-Based Math Pathways for Adult Learners

Lumina Foundation awards Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) and New Classrooms $700,000 to pilot new math pathways for adult learners

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) today announced new funding to support the development of skills-based math pathways for adult learners to achieve college algebra proficiency. 

Working with community colleges, C-BEN is partnering with New Classrooms' Teach to One Roadmaps to pilot personalized math pathways to help learners avoid the barriers and difficulties often associated with standalone remediation courses. By leveraging skills-based approaches, learners can apply prior learning, including work experience, to efficiently achieve college algebra proficiency. The project is funded through a $700,000 grant from Lumina Foundation, which will also support the creation of a college implementation guide to scale the work. This effort is a first step toward designing more innovative models of math education for adults, while also being responsive to in-demand skills needed to access good jobs.

Recent reports by New America and FutureEd highlight the significant challenges still posed by remedial education despite significant reform attempts. Of learners aged 30 and older, 37 percent take remedial courses, which often have high failure rates and significantly reduce their chances of completing college. Nonetheless, adult learners are more than capable when they are set up to succeed. The new project aims to find better pathways to achieve college math proficiency, especially for adult learners who may struggle due to missing a subset of skills or previous academic setbacks, despite using many of these math skills in prior work experience.

"Far too many adult learners have their dreams to pursue post-secondary education dashed before classes even start," said Lisa McIntyre-Hite, executive vice president of C-BEN & chief operating officer of C-BEN Solutions. "This work is about combining best practices in employer engagement, competency-based assessment, state-of-the-art technology, and personalized content to ensure every learner can achieve college algebra proficiency and help adults realize the promise of postsecondary credentials that have too often been out of reach."

C-BEN will select up to three pilot institutions, with 20-50 students participating at each site. The colleges will deploy Teach to One Roadmaps, New Classrooms' digital tool that provides precise, skill-level diagnostic information about the specific skills each learner must master to achieve proficiency, aggregated content to help learners based on their preferences, and short-form assessments to gauge progress along the way. New Classrooms has launched the program in more than 90 schools with support from funders including the Gates Foundation, the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Dell Foundation. "Algebra stands as a significant barrier to college and career success. We're excited to explore how Teach to One Roadmaps can be applied at the postsecondary level so all learners, including adult learners, can access a math education that meets them where they are and gets them to where they need to be," said George Cigale, president of New Classrooms' Teach to One. Cigale also serves on the Board of Regents for UMass Global and on the Board of Trustees for Columbia University's Teachers College.

"This project's focus on learners' mastery of career-relevant skills is a promising approach that could deliver the kind of innovation we need to remove the barrier of remedial education for many students," said Anne Kim, FutureEd senior fellow, and author of Incomplete: The Unfinished Revolution in College Remedial Education.

To share more, C-BEN and New Classrooms are hosting a webinar "Exploring Skills-Based Innovations to Address Math Pathways for Adults" on Thursday, October 17, 2024, at 3 PM EST. Visit here for more information on the webinar and to register.

Future plans for the project include understanding how skills-aligned and personalized math approaches can impact retention, completion, and career advancement for adult learners, with the goal of informing institutions and policymakers as they address barriers caused by remedial education.

About the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN)
The Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) is revolutionizing how we design, experience, and measure learning throughout a lifetime. We believe learning should be measured by what you can do — the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that lay the foundation for your success — and for more than 10 years we have been guiding our expansive network of education leaders, employers, policymakers, and changemakers towards quality competency-based models and practices. C-BEN is a U.S.-based non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.C-BEN.org.

About New Classrooms
Founded in 2011, New Classrooms Innovation Partners Inc. is a national nonprofit organization that aims to personalize education for each student through its Teach to One innovative learning solution. Teach to One was born out of the visionary work of the founders within NYC Public Schools called School of One, which TIME named one of the Best Inventions of the Year in 2009. Teach to One ensures each student learns the right math lesson at the right time and in the right way that best meets their strengths and needs. It is currently used by thousands of students in schools nationwide. To learn more about Teach to One, visit www.teachtoone.org. To learn more about New Classrooms, visit www.newclassrooms.org. 

SOURCE C-BEN