Read National Math Stars' latest announcements and media coverage
STORY | EDTECH INNOVATION HUB | JANUARY 20, 2025
By Emma Stokes
Gifted students in five additional US states – Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin – will each receive over $100,000 in resources over ten years from the not-for-profit National Math Stars (NMS) organization. The aim of the onsite support is to help them advance from grades 2 and 3 through to high school graduation and the upper echelons of math and science.
The NMS not-for-profit now has a national pilot, after starting out in Texas, and is seeking to rollout its support further across the US, starting in the Midwest…
Read ArticlePRESS RELEASE | JANUARY 15, 2025
Students in five additional states will each receive over $100,000 in resources over ten years
HOUSTON – National Math Stars (NMS), a not-for-profit that supports mathematically extraordinary students, today announced an American midwest expansion, beginning with Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. This extension comes on the heels of early successes in NMS’s national pilot and Texas-based programs.
Beginning with 2nd and 3rd-graders, NMS supports exceptionally skilled math students who lack the necessary resources to reach their full potential. Students and their families each receive more than $100,000 in support over a 10-year span, until high school graduation. This support includes math coaching, advanced courses, STEM experiences (with travel), family advising, and other assistance. The program is free for students and families…
STORY | OLIN COLLEGE | SEPTEMBER 30, 2024
National Math Stars is a 10-year, fully funded program that supports and inspires exceptional elementary students’ love of mathematics.
Alumna Ilana Walder-Biesanz ’13 is continuing Olin’s vision of engineering for everyone by starting a nonprofit called National Math Stars, dedicated to ensuring mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to reach the frontiers of math and science.
Walder-Biesanz earned her Master of Philosophy in European Literature from the University of Cambridge, writing about theater and opera. She then did a Fulbright at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Bavaria, Germany, writing about how scripts are brought to life onstage. After working in product management at Yahoo, she earned her MBA at Stanford to learn more about nonprofit management. She then moved to Houston, where she consulted at Bain & Company with nonprofits in climate and education…
Read ArticlePRESS RELEASE | SEPTEMBER 3, 2024
TEXAS, September 3, 2024 – Today, National Math Stars announced that they have selected 61 Texas students as 2024 Stars. These Stars will receive a decade of intensive support, preparing them to become the next generation of leading mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.
The 2024 Stars come from 27 different Texas school districts, including public school, charter school, private school, and homeschooled students. They range in age from 6 to 10. While many of them live near Texas’s largest metro areas, others hail from College Station, Del Rio, and the Rio Grande Valley. On average, Stars scored above 99th percentile on both the quantitative and nonverbal sections of the Cognitive Abilities Test…
Read ArticleOP-ED | CHALKBEAT | JULY 19, 2024
Access to acceleration has long been wildly inequitable. Here’s what schools can do to reduce the financial and logistical barriers.
By Ilana Walder-Biesanz
I went to high school at age 11.
Within two years, I had run out of math and Spanish classes there, so I walked from my public school campus to nearby Lewis and Clark College to study differential equations, symbolic logic, and the plays of 1830s Spain.
People often ask me if it was strange to be a newly minted teenager in classrooms full of college upperclassmen. The truth is, no one knew my age unless I told them. I was just the overenthusiastic, kind of young-looking kid in the front row…
Read ArticlePRESS RELEASE | MAY 1, 2024
New nonprofit invites educators and parents to nominate mathematically extraordinary Texas students in 2nd and 3rd grade, and will support each student with over $100,000 in resources over ten years
HOUSTON, May 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — National Math Stars (NMS) has just closed substantial seed funding of $16.5 million for their first three years, with the mission to ensure mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to reach the frontiers of math and science.
NMS is actively recruiting 2nd and 3rd grade students who lack access to sufficiently advanced instruction and community. NMS will recruit its first cohort of 50 – 60 students from Texas. NMS is asking Texas schools to nominate the top 2 – 3% of their students, and will then run a selection process to find the most mathematically extraordinary students whose trajectories are likely to be changed by this program. Parents and others are also able to nominate or apply on behalf of students directly. The application window is open until June 30, 2024. Future cohorts will come from both Texas and other states as the program grows…
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