BROOKLINE — It was a gray morning in July, and most of their peers were spending the summer sleeping late and hanging out with friends. But the 20 rising 10th graders in Lisa Rodriguez’s class at Brookline High School were finishing a lesson on exponents and radicals.
The students were participating in a summer program created by the Calculus Project. Founded at Brookline High in 2009, the nonprofit group now works with roughly 1,000 students from 14 nearby districts beginning in the summer after seventh grade to help them complete advanced math classes such as calculus before they finish high school.
It focuses on helping students who are historically underrepresented in high-level math classes — namely those who are Black, Hispanic, and low-income — succeed in that coursework, which serves as a gateway to selective colleges and well-paying careers. While some states and districts are nixing advanced-math requirements, sometimes in the name of equity, the Calculus Project has a different theory: Students who have traditionally been excluded from high-level math can succeed in those courses if they’re given a chance to preview advanced math content and take classes with a cohort of their peers.
The Calculus Project’s work has taken on fresh urgency as the pandemic hit Black, Hispanic, and low-income students particularly hard. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action left even some college officials concerned that inequities in high school math would make it harder for them to diversify their classes. The Calculus Project’s national profile has grown, even as it has attracted some scrutiny from parents, due to its emphasis on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“One out of 10 Black students in the eighth-grade math scores were scoring basic or above,” said Kristen Hengtgen, a senior policy analyst at the advocacy group EdTrust, referring to last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card. “When you see that, you need to throw certain student groups the life jacket,”
Only 28 percent of Black students and 31 percent of Hispanic students nationwide took advanced math in high school compared with 46 percent of white students, according to a 2023 report from EdTrust. Just 22 percent of low-income students took advanced math. Experts say that’s because these students are less likely to attend high schools that offer higher-level math or to be recommended by their teachers, regardless of mastery.
As a math teacher at Brookline High in the early 2000s, Calculus Project founder Adrian B. Mims got firsthand experience in what the research was beginning to establish. Black and Hispanic students were largely absent from the high school’s honors and advanced math courses, he said, and those who did enroll often dropped out.
Mims’s idea was to introduce Black students over the summer to math concepts they’d learn in eighth-grade algebra in the fall. Students would be able to take the time to really understand those concepts and to build their confidence and skills.
In summer 2009, Mims piloted his idea with a group of rising eighth graders.
In fall 2010, the district opened the program to all interested students, regardless of race.
Teachers and administrators at Brookline say the project had an immediate — and lasting — impact.
In 2012, Brookline High saw more Black students score as advanced on the state Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Math test than ever before; 88 percent were Calculus Project participants. The highest-scoring student in the district was Black — and a program alum. Two years later, when the first cohort of students who participated in both the summer and yearlong programs graduated from high school, 75 percent had successfully completed calculus.
Today, eight districts participate in the year-round program and another six send their students to the group’s summer programs at Boston University, Emmanuel College, and University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The project runs counter to a recent push to engage high schoolers in math by adding real-world relevancy and substituting classes like data science for algebra II and calculus. Justin Desai, the Calculus Project’s director of school and district support, said he sees risks in that approach. Replacing advanced math classes in favor of less rigorous math courses keeps students from accessing and excelling even in some non-STEM fields like law, he said.
As the Calculus Project has grown, there has, at times, been friction. In July, tension between teachers and students at Concord-Carlisle High School came to a head when some project participants learned they’d been placed in financial literacy or statistics courses instead of calculus.
Mims said only after he threatened to pull the program from the high school were students reassigned to calculus (and one to statistics).
Mims said “this is a clear example” of how teacher recommendations can lock students out of advanced math.
Laurie Hunter, the Concord-Carlisle superintendent, wrote in an email that her district is committed to partnering with the Calculus Project but did not respond to specific questions.
Milton Public Schools, another district that works with the Calculus Project, was the subject of a 2023 federal civil rights complaint from national conservative group Parents Defending Education. The group accused the district of discrimination by partnering with the Calculus Project.
Mims rejects the group’s claims, noting that the Calculus Project is open to students of all backgrounds, including white and Asian students. At the time of publication, the Department of Education listed no open investigations against Milton Public Schools.
Art Coleman, a founding partner at legal group EducationCounsel LLC, said he doesn’t expect such challenges to be successful. School districts have a legal obligation to address inequities in student performance, he said, and “there is nothing in federal law that precludes that targeted support, as long as in broad terms, all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic status, have the ability to tap into those resources and that support.”
The Calculus Project is expanding its programming to help its students succeed not just in high school but in college and beyond, Mims said. It plans to help its graduates secure internships while they’re in college and network once they’re out, and will soon begin tracking students to see how they do in college and the workforce.
“It’s really about giving them every advantage that rich kids have,” Mims said.
Quentin Robinson, who joined the Calculus Project as a rising seventh grader, said it taught him to enjoy math and to advocate for himself.
“My freshman year, they tried to put me in a lower-level math class because they didn’t think I was capable,” Robinson said.
But his summer experience empowered him, and he persuaded the school to place him in Geometry Honors instead. He graduated from high school, having completed both calculus and a college-level statistics course.
Now, Robinson is an accounting and data analytics major at Stonehill College in Easton. The Calculus Project, he said, helped him realize the voices of naysayers can be used as “a fuel” to achieve what you want.
This story about advanced math was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for their newsletter.