Can Great Teaching (Plus an App) Solve our Math Problem? - Education Next
Early on in Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, Shalinee Sharma experiences a moment of doubt. After 13 years at Bain & Company, she cofounds Zearn, an educational nonprofit. Zearn wants to offer great math teaching free to any child. But Sharma and her cofounders immediately encounter an obstacle––one that has frustrated many an educational newcomer: there is no agreement about what great math teaching looks like. “There was no manual for what I wanted to do,” she writes. “I had to go a different way.”
This was in 2012. Since then, Zearn has evolved into a free digital mathematics curriculum and learning platform. Some teachers might pair students with a Chromebook and headphones for supplemental “Zearn time.” It can also be used as a standalone resource with self-paced videos, practice, and games. About 10 percent of elementary teachers across the country report using Zearn once or more a week, according to a 2023 RAND survey. Quite a few math problems have been solved on its platform—over 14 billion.
In the past 12 years, Sharma has visited “thousands of classes” and reached some conclusions. Chief among these is that school is badly broken. “Our math education system makes learning math a hellish experience,” she writes. “Most kids hate math.” Her experience as CEO of Zearn suggests this suffering is needless. All kids can not only learn math but also love math, if supported properly by parents and educators. “It’s time that the adults get together and make that happen.” But how?
