National non-profit SeeMore Impact Labs has introduced two innovations that remake the landscape of postsecondary readiness and completion. We believe that these innovations will:
These innovations are represented by the Core Strategies for Mathematics (CSM) course, and the Excel Together community-wide initiative, which are described in the sections below.
College math is still a major impediment for both college matriculation (students with low math self-efficacy simply don't apply) and college success (math is the primary academic reason for stopping out). Decades of effort in both K-12 and developmental math instruction helped on the margin, but have not significantly reached disadvantaged populations.
We believe that this is because the problem has been largely misidentified -- it is primarily not specifically a math issue, but rather that most disadvantaged students have low academic self-efficacy and are not effective learners.
The self-paced Core Strategies for Mathematics (CSM) course is a next-generation adaptive learning course that simultaneously personalizes instruction in academic and how-you-learn, -act and -feel domains. In addition to teaching college level math, it:
The CSM course is used across a wide range of educational venues (school, college, adult education, workforce development, employee upskilling), across a wide range of educational backgrounds (opportunity youth to college graduates), and in a wide variety of different implementation contexts (online, in classroom, hybrid). Furthermore, in our work with opportunity youth and adult learner populations, it appears that more than half of students with learning differences can complete CSM.
In a national evaluation by SRI International funded by the Joyce Foundation in which CSM was compared to gold-standard programs from McGraw-Hill (ALEKS) and Pearson (MyMathLab), CSM showed the largest math gains and the highest student engagement.
As reported by Brookings Institute, in Tri-C's (Cuyahoga Community College) adult diploma program with mainly opportunity youth participants:
In an Excel Together initiative, CSM is articulated as a general education math class so that it earns Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) at the local community college, and hopefully at some local 4-year colleges, as well. This allows both traditional and non-traditional students to earn college math credit, the most daunting credit for most students.
In an Excel Together initiative, all potential postsecondary students are targeted -- in schools, in colleges, in adult education, in workforce development, in places of employment, and more. All of these students have similar issues, and instead of separate programs for each, the math CPL that CSM earns can be used by all of the students.
Below we describe two current Excel Together initiatives, with earlier efforts in multipe states and metro regions.
In Excel Together New Mexico, CSM has (or will shortly have) math CPL at community colleges with almost two-thirds of all community college students in the state. Albuquerque Public Schools (with about a quarter of all K-12 students in the state) will be implementing CSM in its high schools in Fall, 2026, with other districts in discussion. We are in discussion with a number of additional districts, and we are implementing CSM in a number of other opportunity youth and adult education programs.
CSM is being used as the general education math course at the University of the District of Columbia -- Community College, resulting in large increases in the number of students passing this gatekeeper course, in student engagement, and in instructor morale. CSM is used as onboarding in Georgetown University's Pivot program certificate program for formerly incarcerated individuals, and is used at the DC Infrastructure Academy for programs for powerline and bus/subway maintenance workers. We expect wide usage of CSM in DC public schools by fall, 2026.
Dual-credit is a key college success strategy, and while there are overall positive effects, much less than 10% of students take a dual-credit math class. There are many challenges with dual credit:
Moreover, dual-credit is a strategy for traditional students in high school, which doesn't apply to non-traditional students in adult education, workforce development, and other programs.
Instead of dual credit, SeeMore's Excel Together initiatives leverage Credit for Prior Learning (CPL), and CSM's CPL doesn't suffer from any of the dual-credit drawbacks. With deep remediation, strengthening of academic success skills, and sensitivity to learning differences, almost all students are both eligible for and can successful complete CSM (even those in credit recovery). CPL is treated as transfer credit so there is no transcript issue if the student fails CSM. It's the students task to learn the math on their own (coaches are there to teach independent learning) and therefore coaches don't need to be college math instructors. And finally, CSM is a only small fraction of the cost of dual-credit class.
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