Adult Education
Preparing people for education, work and life
Excel Together New Mexico introduces the Core Strategies for Mathematics (CSM) high school course that accomplishes multiple objectives in a single curriculum:
- prepares for the GED, with improvements not only in math, but in literacy, as well
- provides deep remediation down to 4th grade math skills and 5th grade literacy
- teaches college-level quantitative reasoning along with NM college math credit (Math 1130 -- Survey of Mathematics) -- and yes, most of your students can complete the course!
- develops general academic skills including: active, independent learning; problem-solving strategies and mindsets; persistence; attention to detail; and a drive to excel
- boosts math, general academic, and college-going self-efficacy
- earns a Credly digital badge and a Certificate of High Performance, demonstrating employability skills to employers
CSM is free for all New Mexicans through 2026
(and we're working on forever!)
CSM builds High Performance skills
Excel Together New Mexico introduces the online, self-paced CSM course that builds High Performance skills including:
- college-level quantitative reasoning and informational literacy
- problem-solving mindsets and strategies
- learning strategies, mindsets, and the ability to learn on your own
- intention to excel, supported by attention to detail and persistence
- and, most importantly, self-efficacy -- a person's belief in their ability to succeed at whatever they put their mind to.
These High Performance skills form the basis for success in school, college, work and life.
Self-efficacy, in particular, now enjoys a consensus in educational psychology and organizational development as the single most important factor in performance, both in work and academic contexts. Why?Knowing you can succeed leads to persistence (why be persistent if there's only failure at the end?), and persistence to learning and problem solving, which in turn leads to accelerated acquisition of academic skills.
CSM is different
Inside CSM is a next-generation personalized learning engine that focuses on a person's meta-cognition, behaviors, and affect -- i.e. how the learn, act, and feel. Some aspects of CSM give a sense of its difference from conventional courses:
- CSM builds attention to detail by requiring 100% correct on mainly fill-in-the-blank questions -- this also develops a belief in participants that they are capable of A-level work.
- CSM develops persistence by monitoring student frustration levels and collaborating with coaches to transform it into persistence. Note that low levels of frustration are good, as there is no persistence without frustration, and moderate frustration is characteristic of the "zone of proximal development", where learning is the fastest.
- CSM improves learning strategies and mindsets by observing participant learning meta-cognition to devise personalized interventions.
- CSM builds brain muscles. While most curriculum development aims that each lesson is the same "size" and challenge, CSM starts with more straightforward problems with few distractors and leads to complex, multi-step problems with many distractors. CSM includes growth mindset lessons, but the insight that your brain is a muscle means that like weight training in a gym, you build brain muscle by increasing the weights -- or problem difficulty in a curriculum.
- CSM enhances students' numerical intuitions and way of interacting with the world by focusing on mental math and estimation skills that even the majority of 4-year college graduates lack.
- CSM builds robust problem solving -- one-third of CSM skills are focused on complex multi-step problems, often with information that is incomplete or hidden in memos written at the college level.
- CSM's personalized instruction addresses learning differences -- by personalizing instruction to meta-cognition, behavior and affect, students with learning differences (autism, ADHD, dyscalculia, etc.) appear to complete CSM at comparable rates to neurotypical students.
The CSM Certificate is a concrete indicator of college and career readiness
Using CSM as GED preparation means that on earning their GED, the learner has a number of assets that will help with the future success in education or work.
College Readiness
The CSM Certificate earns college math credit as Math 1130 - Survey of Mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), where it satisfies the general education math requirements for an associate degree -- other colleges expected spring and summer 2026.
Given that college math is the major academic cause for stopping-out in college, and one of the major concerns for people considering college, earning a CSM Certificate improves both college access and completion.
Career Readiness
The CSM Certificate shows that your graduates have in-demand High Performance skills, which overlap substantially with "durable" or "21st Century" or "employability" skills. These are skills that are most valued by employers, but for which they have no way to assess, hire for, or train.
Learners who complete CSM receive a Credly digital badge of High Performance, and the CSM Certificate is for High Performance, of which math is but a part. The back of the CSM Certificate lists not only the math that was mastered (at "A" levels of skill), but also the active, independent learning, the attention to detail, the persistence, and more -- this is a person that employer is more likley to hire.
Survey of WV Manufacturers Association members, 2023
In a 2023 survey of members of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, the most critical workforce skill identified was learning agility, followed by attention to detail and problem solving -- these are all High Performance skills! Job-specific skills were lower, and algebra and related math skills were at the bottom of the list.
Additionally, over a third of manufacturers indicated that they would offer internships to students who had earned a CSM Certificate, and nearly 40% indicated their interest in working with schools to encourage offering CSM.
CSM improves math and literacy
CSM's focus on High Performance competencies including independent learning, persistence, attention to detail, and self-efficacy does NOT mean that it stints on academic learning.
A national study of educational technology with adult learners (and mainly opportunity youth) found that CSM had the largest math and literacy gains compared to gold-standard programs like ALEKS from McGraw-Hill and MyFoundationsLab from Pearson,
Most educational technology increases the skills gap, because it allows advanced students to accelerate while struggling students fall further behind (see, for example, the Pearson results). With CSM, the opportunity youth did far better than classroom instruction. Furthermore, the effect size in math was 0.5, which translates in high school math to roughly two grade levels of improvement per year of instruction.
As a math course, how does CSM improve literacy?
Students are learning math through a self-paced course where the only instruction is written. Unlike a typical math text, everyskill in CSM has 3-6 different types of lessons at different reading levels: short step-by-steps, worked out examples, longer concepts. As students are working on CSM, they're also spending a lot of time in informational text . In work with adult education, it appears that when working with CSM, literacy improvement initially precedes math!
A streamlined pathway to college for adult learners
Few make it thorugh the conventional path
The road to a college degree is daunting for many New Mexicans. Looking at the diagram, to fulfill the requirement, a high school dropout with 4th to 6th grade math skills would need to:
- take a GED course, and then take the GED test -- nearly half will fail the first time and have to take the course/test multiple times,
- then take the ACCUPLACER or SAT college placement test -- most will place into developmental education,
- then take multiple semesters of developmental education,
- then take the required college math course - about half would fail, and need to retake the course
Only after all of this would they be ready to take the healthcare or IT courses that they came to college for - just a few percent of students ever will complete these hurdles.
Note that about half of New Mexico high school graduates have 4th to 6th grade math skills, who then have to face all of these hurdles except for the GED test.
CSM's streamlined path eliminates these hurdles
With Excel Together New Mexico, anyone can fulfill their college math requirement at many colleges simply by taking CSM! CSM is designed with built-in deep remediation, builds general academic and learning skills, and is extraordinarily supportive. This transforms college access and completion for adult learners across the state.
And while dual credit is a powerful means of opening college for high school students, it is not available to adult education programs -- CSM opens to adult education programs the opportunity of offering a GED course that is also a college math course.
Implementation
Time and technology
Most students take 25-70 hours to complete CSM, though some may take longer (e.g. if they start with 4th to 5th grade math skills, are English language learners, or have modest learning disabilities). Depending on your program, most of a student's time on CSM can be at home or in an in-person class, and hybrid situations are very effective.
CSM can be taken on any internet-connected device, including smartphones, with modest bandwidth and data plans.
Cost
CSM is free for all New Mexicans in 2026, and we hope to extend this permenanetly.
Coaching
Coaches help students complete CSM more quickly and happily. CSM coaches do NOT need to be professional instructors (or have any math instructional background). Coaches are mentors, problem-solvers, and cheerleaders, while students independently learn the math and information literacy skills.
Excel Together New Mexico is your partner
We provide extensive free assistance:
- Planning tools for a well-structured, intentional implementation with a high fidelity of implementation
- Professional development for your instructors, as well as free next-generation coaching tools and support. The initial professional development is a 4-6 hour self-paced, online course, and we'll soon begin a Community of Practice for NM adult education instructors
Career Strategies
The path-breaking Career Strategies course is included with CSM, and it provides a new approach to career guidance. Instead of focusing just on career choice, the Career Strategies builds an "internal career coach", available throughout a person's life, by teaching career decision-making as a skill.
For more information, click here.
Student at BridgeValley Community and Technical College
CSM was key in changing her life trajectory...
"...so now I don't have to take any math for my associate’s. Now looking back, I felt like I wasn't deserving of a college degree, because I couldn't get through basic math. I had kinda given up, really. To me, CSM saved me!”
Past student at Eastern WV Community and Technical College
"And since completing CSM, math is no longer frightening to me... You don’t know how much more comfortable I feel with the knowledge that I learned with CSM."
Coordinators at a YouthBuild charter high school
"How could you ask for a better outcome? So many programs out there promise improved learning outcomes and rarely deliver results. From our point of view as educators and administrators, the CSM program not only delivers excellent outcomes, it gives us the opportunity to have these ongoing small teachable moments with students to help strengthen their basis skills and reasoning abilities."
