Math Corps Successfully Replicated

Math Corps Successfully Replicated

Published: Nov 30, 2021
Publisher: Mathematica
Key Findings
  • The replication sites were successful in serving their priority communities.
  • Attendance at Math Corps was strong at all three replication sites.
  • Math Corps students made large and statistically significant gains on the Math Corps exam between the start and end of camp in all three replication sites.

Nearly 30 years ago, Steven Kahn and Leonard Boehm at Wayne State University (WSU) started Math Corps, a summer camp for middle school students who could benefit from mentoring and positive influences. Their primary goal for the camp was to support the emotional and social needs of the students in Detroit; accordingly, the educators leveraged their backgrounds as math teachers to create an intensive summer program that provides not only that emotional and social support, but also high-quality math instruction.

In 2015, the National Science Foundation awarded WSU an Advancing Informal Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Learning grant, enabling the Math Corps summer camp to be replicated in three cities (Cleveland, Ohio; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Utica, New York) in summers 2017, 2018, and 2019. As part of the grant, WSU contracted with Mathematica to conduct an independent study of Math Corps. This brief pres­ents the results of a prospective descriptive analysis of the student characteristics and mathematics achievement at the three replication sites.

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