In a nation where jobs for the unskilled are declining,
and careers demanding advanced skills are increasing, citizens
must be able to compute, communicate, and understand at
more sophisticated levels than in the past. The California
Academic Partnership Program funds partnership programs
focused on improving these very skills.
By connecting middle and high school teachers with college
and university professors and business professionals, CAPP
enables partnerships to draw on the theoretical and research-based
knowledge of the university and the practical knowledge
of the workplace to make class materials more accessible
to students with diverse backgrounds and learning styles.
Through projects that interest and engage the students,
teachers find youngsters eager to learn mathematical concepts
such as percentage, ratio, median, and mean. By actually
using such concepts as part of an enjoyable team project,
students find mathematics more real and memorable than when
they try to simply memorize the theory from a textbook page.
The aim of every CAPP partnership project is to help students
learn, and to know how to use what they learn.
In 1993-94 CAPP funded six academic partnerships, all focusing
on mathematics because math is the gateway to higher education.
While all CAPP partnerships improve curriculum, enrich student's
classroom experience, strengthen academic achievement and
high school graduation rates, and reduce dropout rates, there
are always a few projects that are exceptionally effective.
These partnerships are often chosen for dissemination grants
and encouraged to spend a year sharing the news of what they've
accomplished and how they were able to accomplish it. The
three projects that received dissemination grants in 1993-1994
are:
