KIPP and Sudbury Schools Find Common Ground

Whether you're sweating the small stuff of just hanging out, experts agree, elementary math class is largely irrelevant.

Bruce Smith:

It's legendary in the Sudbury literature: the five-month math class. As Sudbury Valley co-founder Daniel Greenberg reports in the above article, it took twenty weeks—a mere twenty contact hours—for a group of twelve kids ages 9 to 12 to cover all six years of elementary-school math. A miracle? Hardly.

KIPP Academy Lynn:

2.7: Average grade level improvement of fifth-grade students in math and reading after just one year at KIPP Academy Lynn.

I'll start taking people seriously about "disruptive innovation" in K-12 when I start hearing about elementary schools that don't assess in math until fifth grade.