Long-Term Effects of the Dana Center Math Pathways Model: Evidence From a Randomized Trial

By Susan Sepanik and Sukanya Barman | October 2023

This working paper reports on longer term impacts on students’ math completion, academic progress, and academic attainment from a randomized controlled trial of an early model of Dana Center Math Pathways (DCMP). The version of the DCMP assessed in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content that students take, separating it into distinct pathways that better aligned with their 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 study, which followed 1,411 students from four Texas community colleges and ten campuses, found that, in the five years after random assignment, program group students were consistently more likely to successfully complete their first college-level math courses than control group students. The study did not find impacts after five years on the number of overall college credits that students accrued or on the likelihood that students attained a credential or transferred to a four-year college.