I lead strategy and research at Cuemath. I spend most of my week talking to parents across the US about how their children learn math, and turning what they tell us into what we build and teach.
Education
A sixth grader who scores 100 or more on this November's AMC 10 will reach the AIME qualifying score, and the MAA will not let them take the AIME unless they are 13 on the exam day. The MAA's rules for 2027, updated August 26, 2026, add an age requirement: a student must be "13 years or older the da
Education
You are teaching kindergarten math at home and the lesson keeps stopping: a baby on the move, a toddler, or a child who answers off-script. Two programs parents weigh for this year, Kindergarten Math with Confidence and Dimensions Math K, print different lesson shapes.
Education
If you want your child in a private school next fall, the application is open now and most of it closes in January. Of 49 selective schools we checked, in the Bay Area, Seattle, the Northeast, Texas, Georgia, and Florida, 44 name a January deadline.
Education
Your child is in tears over the workbook, and still counts on fingers for the basic facts. You are the teacher, so no report card is going to arrive with a diagnosis on it.
Education
Your child's math report says 90th percentile. Your child scored higher than about 90 of every 100 students in the test maker's national sample.
Education
Fremont Unified does not run an entrance exam for accelerated math, and there is nothing to sign up for before the district's letter arrives. The district reads a score it already has, from the i-Ready Diagnostic your child sits at school, and if the score clears the bar, the family picks the class.
Education
Your district's math placement rules are on its own website, almost never on one page. Of the fourteen districts this blog has read, thirteen decide on a test score, eight also count grades, five also count a teacher's word, and thirteen print a window or deadline.
Education
In the fourteen districts we have mapped, the split is close to even. In every no-test district the door into advanced math is still there: it is a placement score, a course choice, or a teacher's measure, not a gifted label.
Education
The two reports use different scales, and neither comes with a passing mark. On either report, the percentile compares your child with other private-school applicants, not a whole school population, so it can read lower than the percentiles you are used to.
Education
Your child has an i-Ready score from one year and a MAP score from another, or your district just switched from one test to the other, and the two math numbers look nothing alike. They are not supposed to.
Education
Every all-in-one homeschool curriculum ships with a math course already inside, and across the seven programs on this page that course is one of two kinds. None of these boxes places a child against the grade standards a school would use.
Education
The NNAT and the CogAT are both ability tests districts use to screen for gifted and advanced programs, but they measure different things. A score on one does not translate to a score on the other.