Jordan High Exchanges Math Class

    Summer school begins next week for 25 north Long Beach boys in a slightly different atmosphere — the campus of the toney Harvey Mudd College, part of the Claremont Colleges in Pomona.

    All 25 are African-American, leaving eighth grade and set to enter Jordan High School this fall. They have been hand-picked from four north Long Beach middle schools to be part of the first Claremont Urban Math Collaborative.

    “Math has been shown to be one of the real gatekeepers when it comes to academic success,” said Dr. Margaret Grogan, dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University, the lead partner in the collaborative. “The area is the most difficult to overcome, largely because our teachers are not trained. Very few elementary teachers actually have a degree in math.”

    Grogan said that her school began seeking ways to reverse the trend and ran up against Leon Wood, a Long Beach educator and reverend who is pursuing his doctorate at Claremont. Wood had founded the North Long Beach Freedom School in partnership with the Children’s Defense Fund, and had focused his research on academic performance of students in north Long Beach.

    “We learned that African-American males were the lowest of the low,” Wood said. “So we began to identify youngsters who had a shot to become successes.”

    The Long Beach Unified School District joined the partnership enthusiastically, said Board of Education President Felton Williams, especially because the district is focusing on remaking Jordan as a model school. That effort has included partnering with Claremont to conduct a needs assessment.

    “That analysis is complete, and we’re looking at the next steps now,” Williams said. “This math collaborative is a subset of that effort. We’re looking at these students to come back to Jordan as leaders, showing the way to academic success.”

    Claremont professors and graduate students have created a curriculum specifically for this immersion program, Grogan said, with an emphasis on showing how mathematics is relevant to students’ lives instead of rote memory.

    “We will be doing things like teaching math principles through gaming,” Grogan said.

    The students, handpicked by Wood, will spend the next four weeks living on the Harvey Mudd campus. Their parents will visit as well, and parental involvement will be a requirement to keep the youngsters in the program, Wood said.

    “Weekly meetings with the parents are part of the deal,” he said. “That will continue when they come back, too, with meetings at least each month.”

    The four weeks of summer school is the beginning of a four-year commitment through high school, Wood said. When school begins this fall, the students will be paired with mentors from California State University, Long Beach, or CSU Dominguez Hills, and the students will return to Harvey Mudd for another four weeks next summer.

    In fact, the plan is to add a new class of 25 freshmen next year, and to continue growing the program until it is 100 students strong. That expansion will depend on financial support from the private sector, though.

    Early estimates are that it will cost $121,000 for the 25 students to be on campus for the four weeks. That cost will grow as the program grows. But there have been some strong commitments, Wood said, leading with a $60,000 per year grant for three years from American Honda.

    “It’s going to be a struggle, no doubt,” Wood said. “But it is going to be worth every ounce of energy we put into it. We’re creating our future here.”

    For details about the program, call (909) 607-9225 or e-mail david.carpenter@cgu.edu.