Ed Source – Pat Maio
“Next month, 14-year-old Malachi Compton is heading into 9th grade at Grand Terrace High School in the Colton Joint Unified School District east of Los Angeles. But first, he needs help with math. So he rises at 6:30 a.m. four days a week to attend Summer Algebra Institute classes at the Boys & Girls Club of San Bernardino, where he learns to add and subtract fractions with different denominators and calculate algebraic expressions with exponents. The San Bernardino program is one of 17 boot camp-styled math academies set up statewide and funded by California State University in coordination with African-American churches in each community. Dotting the state from Sacramento and Pittsburg in Northern California to Whittier and Irvine in the south, they represent a grassroots effort to close an algebra achievement gap between African-American students and some other racial and ethnic groups, a gap that remains stubbornly large.”(more)