Elevating Leaders to Achieve Equitable Outcomes for all Students

If we were to play a word association game, and I said, “Dana Center,” for many the response would be “Uri Treisman”—immediately and without hesitation.

Uri is a household name in the education community, recognized for his pioneering equity work as a graduate student and subsequent recognition with a MacArthur Fellowship; for founding the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, with over 20 years of innovation in math and science education, research, and policy; and for his enduring role as a mathematics diplomat, wandering anthropologist, and peacemaking sommelier dedicated to building relationships and networks across diverse and often disconnected organizations and associations—all in the relentless pursuit of more equitable outcomes for students in our nation’s education systems.

Here at the Dana Center, Uri is our visionary leader and executive director, the source of countless ideas that fuel our engine of innovation. And while Uri’s accomplishments are too many to count, one that brings him perhaps his greatest joy is the opportunities he has to elevate the work of others.

This blog will introduce you to the Dana Center’s rich and diverse team of leaders and experts—individuals inspired by Uri to create conditions for change, take action, and drive improvement. Student success, particularly for those most underserved, is what motivates Uri, our people, and our work.

We see students continuing to struggle in math and science, and it is our goal to remove barriers to educational excellence.

One of the barriers that we seek to address involves gateway college mathematics courses. In a recent national study an estimated 60 percent of students entering two-year colleges were placed into at least one developmental math course each year, with only 20 percent of these students ever completing a college-level math course, and fewer still going on to earn a credential or degree.

In addition, a 2015 Mathematical Association of America report found that about half of all students who enrolled in traditional College Algebra failed the course. These courses disproportionately serve students of color and students living in poverty.

Dana Center strategies to improve these outcomes center on developing mathematics pathways and restructuring course sequences, building practical transfer and applicability practices based on student mobility patterns, fostering advising practices that surface student aspirations, and cultivating a classroom and college culture focused on student success and degree completion.

Martha Ellis leads our higher education team, working alongside a robust network of states and national partners, to tackle these challenges and ensure that more students—and more diverse populations of students—earn the credentials need to achieve their goals.

Higher education isn’t the only place where students struggle and educational inequities persist.

Algebra I continues to be a major stumbling block for our nation’s most struggling students; it is the course most commonly failed by ninth-graders. As shown in multiple studies, (University of Chicago, Florida International University) students who fail Algebra I are much less likely to graduate from high school on time or at all.

And it turns out ninth-grade biology success rates aren’t much better—and failure there is another predictor of student success in high school.

Doug Sovde is leading our K–12 team to fundamentally rethink our students’ mathematics and science learning experiences, the culture of learning our schools and classrooms create, and the commitment our communities make to sharing responsibility for the success of all students.

Make no mistake: having ambitious aspirations means we often fall short.

That may well be another motivating force for the Dana Center. Most likely to inspire and engage our attention are problems of practice that are pervasive, persistent, and practically impossible to address. History shows that quick fixes and simple solutions are unlikely to remove barriers to equitable access to a quality education or fulfill promises of upward mobility for all students. We prefer to build a large tent of “joyful conspirators” committed to pursuing the root causes and institutionalized practices that too often get in the way of students realizing their full potential.

My money says that in the next year if we were to play that word association game again, the phrase “Dana Center” will elicit a long list of extraordinary people and trusted colleagues, all driven by a heartfelt sense of focus and purpose, working together to change the lives of our nation’s students.