Almost half of US high schools do not offer calculus. That single fact, drawn from the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education covering more than 13,000 districts, is the foundation of MIT's new MIT4America Calculus Project, launched in fall 2025 with support from the Siegel Family Foundation.
Built by the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program STEP Lab, the project recruits MIT undergraduates and alumni to tutor students in underresourced high schools remotely, once a week. It currently has 30 undergraduates and 7 alumni tutors working across 14 school districts, with expansion to roughly 20 districts projected by summer. The first cohort sat AP exams this spring.
The piece is worth reading for what it does not say as much as what it does: MIT is treating calculus access as a structural admissions barrier, not a motivation problem. The framing, the program design, and the scale targets reveal a specific theory of change. Read it to understand who is locked out of STEM pipelines before they ever apply anywhere.
[READ ORIGINAL →]