The national conversation about declining math scores, and their implications for college-level math, is reaching a fevered pitch. It’s getting a great deal of attention at the national level, including inquiries about math readiness of students after a University of California – San Diego report that found, “Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900—and most of those students don’t fully meet middle-school math standards.”
An article last fall in The Hill proposed a solution…one that New Mexico is already implementing: make math career relevant. Thanks to the partnership of the New Mexico Public Education Department’s College and Career Readiness Bureau and Pathway2Careers, Pathway2Careers’ first-of-its-kind, career-connected Pre-Algebra, Algebra I and II, and Geometry, as well as the new Math Bridge intervention (combining concepts from 4th to 7th grade math) are available to all New Mexico schools at no cost.
New Mexico’s schools, including Carlsbad Early College High School, are choosing to use Pathway2Careers math either as core or supplemental curriculum. The growth in learning, as measured by the MetaMetrics assessments embedded in the platform, are showing promising results.
Based on an analysis conducted across a group of students in the 2024-25 School Year, New Mexico students who used the curriculum as core or supplemental achieved far greater growth in learning than grade level national averages, as well as demonstrable success in bringing low-performing students up to national averages at grade level.
| Item | Geometry | Alg I | Pre-Alg | Alg II |
| # Students | 88 | 21 | 48 | 101 |
| Average Student Quantile Gain | 174 | 147 | 364 | 296 |
| National MetaMetrics 50th Percentile Gain by Grade Level | 35 | 35 | 40 | 30 |
| Average P2C Student Quantile Gain Above National 50thPercentile | 139 | 112 | 324 | 266 |
| % P2C Students Above 50th Percentile Quantile Score at the Beginning of the Year | 11% | 10% | 13% | 17% |
| % P2C Students Above 50th Percentile Quantile Score at the Middle or End of the Year | 42% | 24% | 88% | 61% |
Pathway2Careers also posted a recent blog on making math engaging for students: https://p2c.org/11-creative-ways-to-make-math-engaging-for-k-12-students/
If you’d like to learn more about Pathway2Careers Math to explore how to bring it into your school, reach out to Jennifer.Amis@p2c.org.