Impact Findings From the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways Long-Term Follow-Up Study

By Susan Sepanik | December 2023

This brief highlights findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT)—launched in 2015 at four Texas colleges—of an early version of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model, which diversified math course content into distinct pathways that better align with students’ career interests. It also streamlined developmental math sequences into a one-semester developmental course for all students assessed as needing developmental support, regardless of placement level, and implemented evidence-based curricula and pedagogy to engage students in active problem solving that was pertinent to real-life situations. The RCT found that the model had a sustained impact on students’ successful completion of their first college-level math course of 5.6 percentage points after five years. The impact on college-level math completion did not lead to discernible effects on credential completion. Since the launch of this early version of DCMP, the Dana Center has continued to refine and update the model over time, and the findings in this study do not reflect the effects of the current version of the DCMP model. The findings do offer some insights that may inform the current implementation of math pathways and other developmental math reforms. More details on the findings are available in a companion CAPR working paper.