Now in its ninth year, Northeastern’s Boston Summer Advanced Math prepares underserved urban high school students for their calculus course in their senior year in high school. The program also links rising seniors with one-on-one counseling to prepare for college. Reform precalculus prepares students for calculus in their high schools, and for college. Counseling from Bottom Line prepares for college.

The Pipeline funding will reach one section of twenty-five BPS rising seniors for six weeks in the summer, to prepare them for calculus in their schools. Almost all students are underrepresented minorities or new immigrants. Each student is urged to utilize the services of The Bottom Line for individual counseling in preparing for college during the following year. The summer morning program has been in existence for nine years at Northeastern University. Students who have completed the program often return as Mentors, completing the circle.

Boston Summer Advanced Math is a model for urban education, especially, in the way it deals with the urban population. It is connected to college, with college mentors (many of whom will want to go into teaching), and it helps supply some of the social savvy needed for college along with the math, which is all important as an indicator of future college success. We are very interested in having projects replicated throughout the region. For example, the notion of supporting the summer math/Pre-Calc work is to take a successful model of both increasing the number of children taking higher-level mathematics courses, but also their success in those courses. The "model" is one that can be taken to scale; the long-term goal is to train trainers (secondary math teachers, community college faculty and higher education faculty) to teach Pre-Calc at multiple locations throughout the pipeline region. Any model the Network moves forward should be of interest to other districts within our region - districts that responded included Hull, Quincy, Weymouth, and Newton etc. To that end, the program meets standards of quality commensurate with the benefits it promises and is truly accessible to all districts in the Network as well as to diverse constituents.