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The program was formally adopted into the Pasadena Unified School District curriculum after District Superintendent Brian McDonald made a surprise visit to Jason and Sandy’s class and saw 10- and 11-year-old kids competently and enthusiastically solving problems that most high school students would find difficult.
The 2016-2017 academic year saw the kickoff of the Math Academy pilot, which debuted with 5th-grade-grade classes at McKinley and Sierra Madre Elementary School, 6th-grade classes at McKinley, Sierra Madre Middle School, and Washington Middle School, and a 7th-grade class at McKinley.
The program has steadily grown since and garnered praise — from around the country.
In the same year, due to the pandemic, the husband and wife launched a standalone online platform for the program, allowing students outside of Pasadena and even the country to benefit from it.
Growing Rapidly
“We’re growing a lot more rapidly now. And it offers courses from fifth grade all the way up through all the university level courses and everything in between. So we have students in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Texas,” said Jason.
What started as a program for elementary students, is now serving adults who want their math skills refreshed through its online program.
“We have also had a big influx of adult learners who want to refresh the math they lost or want to learn more advanced math or want to do, say, math or machine learning. So I’ve actually spoken to a lot of these customers and it’s just sort of interesting their motivations,” said Jason. “It’s not just parents signing up accounts for their kids.”
“And so anyone around the world who wants to use it, whether they want to use it individually as a family, or they want to set up a learning pod or a teacher wants to use it for a class, or a district wants to adopt it, they can.”
According to Jason, anyone outside of PUSD can pay $49 a month to use the Math Academy software.
Students Decreased
While there has been tremendous growth over the last years, Jason also said the number of PUSD students enrolling to the program have declined over the past years due to the pandemic.
About 175 students at PUSD are currently enrolled in Math Academy, according to Jason.
“We took a pretty hit because there was really no ability to efficiently advertise and promote it. And it really hurt our numbers in some of the younger grades. We’d probably be, well in the two hundreds if it hadn’t happened,” said Jason, referring to the pandemic.
Besides the pandemic, Jason also believes not many parents are aware of the program and this lack of awareness has contributed to the decreasing enrollment.
What’s Next
The Roberts’ are currently focusing on making the online version of Math Academy better and more accessible in hopes that more people and the other districts will use the program in the future.
“We feel like by going that route, I think we can probably impact a lot more people, a lot more efficiently”
“I think at some point if the system demonstrates its effectiveness and people really enjoy it and really like it, and they’re really happy with the results, then schools will then be much more ready to adopt it because they’ll know about it, or have heard about it and they’ll have lots of people in the community have used it and are encouraging the school to use it,” said Jason.
For this year, the husband and wife will help promote Math Academy to make parents aware that it is available and what it actually is. “I think that’s what we really need to do to kickstart after the pandemic years,” Jason remarked.
For more information about Math Academy visit: https://www.mathacademy.us
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