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Justin Skycak

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--> Elementary and middle schoolers acing AP Calculus BC, high schoolers publishing research and winning national science competitions, alumni pursuing PhDs in quantum computing, adults rebuilding their confidence in math, and more -- plus how Math Academy makes outcomes like these possible.<br>Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.

I keep coming across success stories from Math Academy students. There are enough of them at this point, that I figured I should just go through my bookmarks and make a post out of it.<br>These stories are 100% organic – we did not pay for any of them to be posted, and we did not even request any of these students to post their progress. To date, the total amount that Math Academy has spent on paid posts is a flat $0.<br>This is a living document, and it’s nowhere near a complete list – it’s just the stories I’ve personally come across and bookmarked. I’ll keep adding to it.<br>Table of Contents<br>How It Started -- 8th graders passing AP Calc BC in our original school program; our learning outcomes skyrocketed during the pandemic when we deployed our fully automated learning system; students outside our original in-school program used the system and achieved similarly incredible results<br>More Kids Crushing Standardized Tests -- and building confidence, and not just kids who started ahead<br>Joe Liemandt uses Math Academy as Alpha School's primary 4th-12th grade math curriculum and calls it the key to their outstanding math results<br>What's the Point of Acceleration? -- Former students are pushing the boundaries of their fields of interest<br>Not Just for Kids -- plenty of adult success stories too, ranging from adults re-learning math to adults who never thought they could learn math in the first place<br>How is All This Even Possible? -- Nerd Levels 1-3

How It Started -- 8th graders passing AP Calc BC in our original school program; our learning outcomes skyrocketed during the pandemic when we deployed our fully automated learning system; students outside our original in-school program used the system and achieved similarly incredible results<br>Math Academy’s original school program is a highly accelerated 6-12th grade math program in Pasadena where 6th graders start in Prealgebra, and then learn the entirety of high school math (Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Precalculus) by 8th grade, and then in 8th grade they learn AP Calculus BC and take the AP exam, and then in high school they study a full undergraduate math curriculum.<br>It’s the most accelerated math program in the USA, there have been plenty of other news articles written about it, and there’s plenty of other information straight from the horse’s mouth including a summary of events 2014-20 (from Sandy and Jason’s perspective), a summary of events 2019-23 (from my perspective, with a focus on teaching in the school program and getting the algorithms in place to turn it into a fully automated system), and another summary of events 2014-20 that I gave on Anna Stokke’s Chalk and Talk Podcast #42 (I’ll paste the relevant snippet below):<br>"So back to this eighth graders taking AP Calc BC story. We originally started as a nonprofit school program founded by Jason and Sandy Roberts. One of their kids, Colby, was on the fourth-grade math field day team, and his parents were coaching that team. Their kid and his friends were all really excited about learning math, so they did the standard fourth-grade field day stuff. But the kids were so excited that they didn’t want to just stop at fourth grade. Something they would often ask Jason and Sandy was, “What’s the highest level of math?”

Jason and Sandy would have to say, “Well, it goes really, really high, but for your purposes, let’s just say it’s calculus, because that’s what seniors in high school take if they are on the honors track.” And the next question was, of course, “When do we get to learn it? Can we learn it now? Can we learn calculus tomorrow?” They were just so excited about it.

Jason and Sandy were teaching a bunch of these kids advanced math, even through fifth grade. They got up through a bunch of high school math and to the point where they could start learning calculus. One thing led to another, and this turned into an official school program that was not just a pullout class but became a daily Math Academy class. There were other cohorts that came in following years.

What this turned into was that we would get students in sixth grade who were solid on their arithmetic. They might know what a variable is, but they didn’t really know how to solve equations or anything. They were kind of at an early pre-algebra level. We would scaffold them up, teach them all of high school math within the next two years -- sixth and seventh grade. Pre-algebra, algebra...