What exists today
BUILT, NOT CLAIMED.
Note what is absent: students served, districts reached, engagement, score gains. Those are outcome claims and we have none, because no class has run the program. This section will grow from the left as that changes.
The research base
WHAT THE LITERATURE
DOES AND DOES NOT SUPPORT.
Four sources carry most of the argument. Each is summarized with its actual weight, including where a study is too small or at the wrong grade to prove what we would like it to prove.
There is no efficacy trial at this grade level.
We could locate no randomized or quasi-experimental study of a discrete mathematics enrichment program in the early elementary grades with measured outcomes. Anyone who tells you the evidence base here is strong is overstating it. That gap is the reason the study below exists.
The evaluation
HOW WE WILL KNOW.
A matched-classroom quasi-experiment across four to eight Grade 2 classrooms, run over a single school year, with classrooms rather than students as the unit of assignment. A randomized design is not realistic at this scale and we will report it as what it is.
The participation-breadth measure is the one we care about most, because it operationalizes the actual hypothesis: that a different kind of content changes who gets to be the child explaining something to the class.
Pre-committed
WHAT WOULD SHOW
WE ARE WRONG.
Published before data collection, so it cannot be moved afterward.
Grade-level benchmark performance declines relative to comparison classrooms. That would mean the opportunity cost is real and the supplement is not affordable.
Participation breadth does not move, or moves toward students already identified as high-achieving. That would mean we built a better gifted program, not a wider door.
Teachers do not complete the year. Below roughly two-thirds of weeks, the design has failed regardless of what the other measures say.
Cost
WHAT A CLASSROOM
ACTUALLY COSTS.
Published so a principal can see there is no catch and a funder can see what a seat costs. These are our internal figures at local print rates, not a price.
A school with its own reprographics can run the program for the cost of paper, since every file is free to download.
Voices from the field
THIS SPACE IS FOR
OUR FIRST COHORT.
When students, teachers and families have something to say about the programs, their words will appear here with their permission and their real names, and not before.
CHECK US BEFORE YOU FUND US.
Our registration, filings and open gaps are published in full, including a board seat we have not filled. Young Innovators for Change · EIN 33-1544346.