Math Program Adds Up to Success : Grants Allow Spurgeon Students to Apply the Principles and Problems to Real Life

A middle school in Santa Ana has been demonstrating that having the lowest math scores among the city’s seven middle schools need not be a pattern that is repeated indefinitely. A national program designed by the University of Pittsburgh and the Ford Foundation aimed at boosting math performance of students in low-income areas has brought encouraging results.

The program is called QUASAR, which stands for Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning. Spurgeon Intermediate School, which educates a large number of students with limited English skills and students living in poverty, received a $450,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in 1991 to implement the program. It was developed with the idea that poor performance of low-income students is due to a lack of access to good mathematics. Students work in groups and are given assignments where they visualize geometry and work with actual shapes rather than learn the traditional method by rote. The school’s scores on the California Test of Basic Skills rose last year, and eighth-graders posted the second-highest gains in math, compared with scores from the sixth grade. Students in all three grade levels still are below district average in math, but are no longer at the bottom. The district should be credited for its willingness to adapt to new methods and try something different. Rick Doty, who coordinates the project on campus, said, “One of our pluses was that we had no place to go but up.” In effect, the program has altered how students learn math.

Spurgeon’s Ford Foundation grant expires this year, but the state has awarded the school a $25,000 grant for the next three years to continue the program.

These are dollars well spent, and those who have made the success possible should be congratulated and encouraged in these efforts.