Pamela Burdman
Pamela Burdman
Senior Project Director,
Opportunity Institute
Pamela Burdman, Senior Project Director at the Opportunity Institute and founder of the Just Equations project, is an expert on college access, readiness, and success. Working at the intersection of education research, policy, and practice, she synthesizes knowledge from the field to define problems and advance strategies that support student success. Burdman has more than 20 years of experience working on issues of postsecondary readiness and success, first as a reporter covering education for the San Francisco Chronicle and later as a program officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She holds masters degrees in philosophy and East Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Publications by Pamela Burdman
There is growing concern that the remedial math courses taken by most community college students unnecessarily divert some students from earning a degree. Anecdotes of students who thought they had completed their math requirements in high school…
The conventional algebra-intensive math curriculum commonly dictates students’ options for entering and completing college, including their ability to transfer from two-year to four-year institutions. The assumption that higher-level algebra is…
Since the mid-20th century, the standard U.S. high school and college math curriculum has been based on two years of algebra and a year of geometry, preparing students to take classes in pre-calculus followed by calculus. That pathway became…