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@Myicitygirl: how old is your kiddo?

My feeling on this has recently switched. Warning: Long answer ahead.

I was never put in this type of extra math program myself, and all the second hand information I had was negative--there have been threads here on HB in the past that were mostly negative. Too many worksheets, too much repetition, boring, etc. So I was always against them.

Then this summer, I read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/145165443X

I read it for work, for a team I'm on at the middle school where I teach and serve as a media specialist. But I think it has impacted my parenting plans even more than my teaching.

Anyway, to sum up the book. The U.S. doesn't measure up to other industrialized nations in terms of education on global tests. Some of this is explained in the vast disparity between states that score very well--Massachusetts is always tops in the U.S. and scores very well overall compared to other countries, on par with Finland and Singapore and ahead of most other countries--and the low performing states (think Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, etc), where their performance results are on part with countries like Nicaragua and Libya. I wish I could say I was kidding.

I live in NJ, so at first I was feeling "relieved", like...oh hey, so the U.S. kind of sucks overall but my particular state does really well compared to other countries, so we're good.

But here was one interesting stat that stood out to me. Although our top states score very well in the verbal and even science portions of global tests, their rank drops quite a bit when it comes to Math. The author even had stats that show that kids from some of the most competitive private schools in the nation are not scoring as high in Math as say, the typical public school student in Singapore or Finland or China or Japan.

Why is that?

Well, the issue has many roots, from the socioeconomic to the societal. But book posits that for Math, there's only one reason why the students in the US that have been afforded every single opportunity would be getting these scores--and it just came down to the fact that the U.S. has less rigorous math standards, and kids will only meet the standard that is set for them.

As a parent, I want to effect change where I can, but it also seems like as a society, Americans don't really want a lot of change in this area. People have complained endlessly about common core math and Singapore math and basically every other math program that has been introduced.

So, as a parent, I immediately panicked that even if my child continues to do well at her public school in math as she grows up, she isn't actually doing well on a global scale.

And the only thing I can control is....maybe enrolling her in some kind of extra math program--Kumon or Alphaminds or Mathnasium. My older sister put both of her kids in Kumon and they've both always been very strong in math, even in a state that isn't *so great* in education (Georgia). My niece is a senior and made a 1540 on her SATs. Now...my sister is a type A kind of person and she's passed that onto her kids. So I can't say that's from Kumon, but I think it's part of the puzzle. Similarly, my SIL (husband's sister) enrolled her kids in Canada into Kumon, and they always know math concepts the year before they learn it at public school. And Canada scores well above the U.S. in math too, but it's still been helpful.

SO, TL;DR

At worst, you spend some money and find out it's not for you or your kid.

At best, you can give your kiddo an extra boost in an area where he may not get it in public school.

@Anagram: Thanks for the book recommendation, I just ordered it. I feel exactly like you described in your post...I hope my son will be well positioned in the global economy and in order to do that, I have to look outside his school to find educational opportunities. While we don't do a formal math class, I do use Greg Tang's materials with my son on the weekends and as supplemental homework. It helps that the school supports the GT methodology and teaches them that way (it is better to know how to solve one problem deeply and by multiple methods than to solve thousands superficially and in one way).

@annem1990: We are our own worst problem. We have an inertia problem in our schools. As an example, the summer vacation issue. When you look at it, sure, it's only 2 or 3 months of the year, how much learning can you actually lose? But when you look at it over the course of a child's learning career, those 3 months become years of lost learning and retention. I am not going to let my son fall behind because we don't want to change.

Sorry OP, to answer your question, I am in the "yay" group if you can manage it.

My LO is too young to have personal experience, but I know so many people who have sent their kids (including quite young) to Russian math, and I have heard very positive things. I was just having this conversation a couple of days ago, and for this friend it was not about turning his kid into a top mathematician or something. But rather he'd found that schools in the U.S. tend to convey the impression that math is a hard, scary thing, whereas he wanted his kid to understand that math can be fun and logical and to lay the foundation for feeling confident and not intimidated by quantitative stuff. He is foreign and was very surprised by the attitude towards math in the U.S., which he thinks is one of the underlying reason for the poor relative performance that @Anagram: mentioned...

I think after school math programs are a great investment. Personally, i'm not a fan of Kumon because of their methodology. I've heard better things Russian School of Math, Mathnasium and Spirit of Math, which is less worksheet focused.

The pendulum keeps swinging between rote memorization and understanding the concepts. There are a lot of teachers who aren't well equipped at teaching/explaining math, confusing the kids and parents. I think there needs to be a balance and these after school programs fill the gaps to help ensure the kids have a solid foundation in basic math concepts.

To answer your question, if you care more about having him grasp concepts and "why" it's done, i would think about an enrichment program instead of worksheets. Worksheets are good if you have the time to sit down and do the explanation yourself.

@looch: Another thing to add is that if my kid is ahead in math, i don't want her twiddling her thumbs in class waiting for other kids to catch up.