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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anyone’s ES use this curriculum? DC is starting a new school that uses it and I’m curious what to expect. Do your DCs respond well to it? Does it keep them engaged and progressing? It’s hard to get a decent grasp from Google whether this is an effective curriculum or if we’ll see it go the way of the dinosaurs in another decade.[/quote]

From the few samples I've seen, it doesn't look bad, in fact it even seems better for smart students than Eureka, which is very popular with public schools, include my kids' schools. Eureka is mind-numbingly boring for anyone who is a little smarter than average.  I don't think you have anything to worry about, but you can always supplement at home with your own materials if you think there are gaps in your kids' understanding. Amazon has workbooks galore.[/quote]

A point in IM's favor is that it was developed by William McCallum, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics and has worked on college-level math textbooks. IM does not seem faddish at all. Other curricula are authored by people with degrees in education and other non-mathematical fields of study who are steeped in fads. [/quote]

What is one example difference between IM and another popular curriculum like Eureka?

What makes a college professor more qualified to teach elementary math than an education  specialist? [/quote]

A child who is bright in math benefits from a challenging curriculum with more variety and depth. Somebody who does challenging math for a living is the ideal person to deliver that kind of content. Think of AOPS/Beast Academy, RSM, etc. Those companies hire math people to design their math enrichment materials, and hire math Ph.D.s to teach their online courses.

Eureka is not designed for smart children at all. It's designed for teachers who have to teach kids with low math ability, and one of its features is showing dozens of ways to solve the same problem in the hopes that one of the methods sticks. If a child is bright, it wastes a lot of learning time, time that could be spent learning new things. Most research in education focuses on people with learning problems, not people who are smart, so programs that are designed by educator types tend to cater to the minority of kids who at the bottom of the class.[/quote]

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