1) The World Economic Forum predicts that 5 million jobs will be lost in the next 3 years due to new technologies like robotics and AI, but these innovations will also create many new jobs requiring new skills. 2) Experts agree that math proficiency will be increasingly important for success in the new global economy. Research shows passing algebra and geometry by 10th grade significantly increases the chances of college attendance. 3) However, only about 1 in 3 eighth graders are ready to take these classes, and less than 20% of students who start behind ever catch up under the traditional school model. New approaches are needed to better meet students' individual needs.

1. Math Mastery Matters
Joel Rose
Chief Executive Officer, New Classrooms
Geek Out Breakfast - United Nations Delegates Dining Room
April 20, 2017

2. The World Economic Forum recently predicted that 5 million jobs will be lost in the next three years as
new technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence replace the need for human workers.
The good news is that many of these innovations are going to create a whole suite of new jobs. The
question is what kinds of skills will these students need in order to be successful?

3. If you ask the World Economic Forum or leading professors or even Bill Gates, there’s one thing
that comes through in all of their answers:
Math
Math has always been important, but it’s about to become a necessity. A key gateway into a
succeeding in this new global economy.

4. Research tell us that if there’s one indicator that can tell us whether a student is on track with
math, it’s whether they pass courses like Algebra and Geometry early in their high school career.
According to ACT, if you can pass them by 10th grade, you have an 80% chance of attending
college.

5. If not, your chances go down to 30%.
But to succeed in these classes, you need to be ready for them. And here’s where
the rub is.

6. Only about 1 in 3 exiting 8th graders are truly ready for to take these classes. 1 in 3.
Everyone else? We end up remediating them to death, both in high school and in community
college. And we don’t do that especially well. Less than a 20% of them ever catch up.

7. There are examples of great schools that beat these odds. But the ingredients that go into their
efforts can be hard to replicate across 130k US schools.
So is there anything else we can do?
We think there is, but it requires challenging some basic notions around how schools work
today.

8. Imagine you are fifth grader on the first day of school.
You go to your first math class, and the teacher tells you that you’ll learn 40 skills
and deeper concepts over the course of the year.

9. For example: skills such as: Calculate the area of a triangle…

10. Create and explain equivalent fractions…

11. And analyze data using line graphs

12. By the end of year, maybe you really understood most of these skills, but a few
you were still a bit hazy on. Some of those happen to be requirements for what
you’ll learn in 6th grade.

13. Now it’s the first day of 6th grade...and those gaps you carried over from 5th grade
keep you from learning 12 or so skills on that curriculum.

14. The gaps from that year carry over into 7th grade…

15. Then by 8th grade, almost half the curriculum is simply inaccessible to you.
Now you may come to hate math. It makes you feel like a failure.

16. Or what if you’re an advanced learner. You walk into 7th grade already knowing
half of the curriculum. You might even be ready to learn some 8th grade skills…

17. But in the traditional system, you’re blocked from exploring the more advanced topics. Why do
you need to sit there and review what you already know? Shouldn’t you be able to accelerate if
you can? In today’s standard classroom model, it’s not so easy to do.
Teachers try to make that work, but it’s hard to both meet the needs of advanced learners while
also meeting the needs of the kids who are further behind. It can burn a teacher out pretty fast.

18. I should know. I was one of them.
When I taught fifth grade for three years, I had students in my class on a 2nd grade level, some
on an 8th grade level, and everywhere in between. I was given a set of 5th grade textbooks and
told good luck. I worked hard, but there was no way I could have possibly created the ideal
lesson for each of my students each day.

19. This fundamental challenge for both kids and teachers can’t be solved with new
standards or tests or more teacher training or even more parental choice.
It requires a completely different classroom model than the one-teacher-30-kids-
in-a-box approach we had for more than 100 years.

20. A model that can enable kids to be met where they are.
A model that integrates many of the ways that kids can learn, such as with a
teacher, with peers, or independently.

21. A model that uses data in innovative ways so that it’s continually learning what
works best.

22. And one that gives teachers a more sustainable role in the classroom.

23. That is what Teach to One: Math is. And it’s an approach that’s now powering math instruction
in 38 pioneering schools across 10 states. Each day, for 13,000 students, we figure out what skill
or concept they should work on, what lesson they should get, where in the room it should take
place, and how it should be staffed.

24. Professor Doug Ready at Teachers College at Columbia found that students made
annual gains that are the equivalent of 1.5 times the national average. That’s like
being in school for an extra 5 months each year.
But we believe these results are just the very beginning.