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Khan Academy teams up with OPS to teach math literacy

Khan Academy is a set of online tools
Posted at 6:45 PM, Oct 19, 2021
and last updated 2021-10-19 19:45:19-04

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Khan Academy is a set of online tools that educate students in the form of videos and practice exercises.

From Algebra and Geometry to Differential Equations, students will have the chance to learn at their own pace with a subject many consider their "weak point."

"70% of kids, these are the kids who do what they are told, graduate from high school, go to community college or a four-year college, they have to take remedial math," CEO Sal Khan said. "Remedial math isn't 11th or 12th-grade math at the college level, remedial math is 7th or 8th-grade math."

Sal Khan started his non-profit after his cousin was struggling with unit conversion.

"Math really is like that, if you don't have a strong foundation, it's going to get harder and harder and harder to engage later on," Khan said.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent Cheryl Logan wants students to stop thinking that they aren't good at math.

"It's personalized, right, people can understand and they don't have to have as much anxiety about doing it in front of a lot of other people. It's them and the opportunity to move forward," Logan said.

Logan wants students to look at math as "building blocks."

"Math is a language. You learn it. You learn the building blocks and then you move forward," Logan said. "There's a reason you do algebra first to kind of understand there's a reason. Number sense is so important to little kids."

Ultimately, Khan and Logan want students to embrace and not shy away from the gift of learning.

"The ability to factor quadratic or solve a trigonometric equation, that carries into a lot of other fields. The world is only getting more analytical, more data-based. That's a huge signal for almost anything that young people will have to go into," Khan said.

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