For The Nation, originally published January 24, 2012:
When Bob Moses brought his Algebra Project to Baltimore in 1990, he could hardly have imagined the impact his mathematics curriculum would have on the city’s youth two decades later.
Convinced that inner-city kids should be prepared for honors-level high school math, Moses – a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee – founded the Algebra Project, which uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure quality public school education.
In Baltimore, the group’s students established a safe source of income to maintain the program and to keep them off the streets during high school by creating a tutoring program in 2001, raising funds to pay older students to teach younger ones.
When their state funding was threatened, the students formed an Advocacy Committee, researched the issues behind the cuts, and, unconvinced of the necessity of the budget axe, met with community and faith leaders to successfully stop the cuts. Today, the Baltimore Algebra Project operates on a $500,000 budget from public and private sources, and is entirely run by young people under the age of 23.