Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and the wave of changes it’s caused, there’s a lot we don’t know – especially where school is concerned. One thing we have learned from the summer slide is that, even in typical times, kids lose some academic progress when there is an extended break from school. With months of school shutdowns tacked onto the front of 2020’s summer vacation, there’s good reason for concern that children could fall even more behind in math, reading, and other subjects while waiting to return to the classroom.  Countering Coronavirus Learning Loss Despite all the uncertain ..read more

Don’t put off preschool! When 2 and 3-year-old children resist separation or have anxiety about preschool, parents often consider putting off school for another year. But studies show that 1/3 of intellectual skills are developed by age 6! This makes the pre-kindergarten years an opportunity for you to make the most of your young child’s sponge-link brain and ensure he or she is exposed to as many different learning experiences as possible. Before you decide to leap into a formal program or delay the start of school, consider a third option: Gradual Separation. Gradual Separation for Toddlers ..read more

A recent round of testing shows that American girls are rocking their STE(A)M classes and mastering technical material. On the 2018 Technology and Engineering Literacy Assessment, given to 15,400 eighth-graders from about 600 public and private schools across the country, girls scored an average of five points higher than boys. Girls also showed greater improvement over time. Mixed Results While this is an exciting and promising finding, girls are still taking fewer tech and engineering classes than boys. Also, test scores showed limited improvement for all but the highest-scoring student ..read more

The team at FTKNY (FasTracKids NY) recently had the honor of speaking with an international TV network for a feature showcasing our supplemental STEAM education programs on Japanese television. Thanks to an abundance of emerging opportunity for technical talent worldwide, parents and educators around the world have begun looking to America for insight on STEAM education. After exploring the FasTracKids approach, the team was eager to share our model with their Japanese audience and paid a visit to our Staten Island – Grasmere learning center. STEAM Unlocks Career Opportunities It’s a bold stat ..read more

Here at FasTracKids, we’re always on the lookout for better and more diverse opportunities for parents to increase their kids’ exposure to educational experiences – especially when it comes to STE(A)M. We also believe that learning should be fun. For these reasons, we’re excited to share our new partnership with Groovy Lab in a Box. Groovy Lab in a Box is full of everything a child needs to learn about and do hands-on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experiments. This award-winning company uses the mail-order model (subscription or a la carte) to deliver suppl ..read more

Sometimes people ask us why we do this. Why education? Why kids? Why America? Every now and again, a story emerges in the mainstream media to which we can point and say, “That’s why.” Recently, Entrepreneur.com explored the reasons why talented millennials get fired. Education leader Trevor Muir then distilled the 11 reasons they identified down to a single concept – the lack of “soft” skills. For the team at FasTracKids, these two articles give us the opportunity to say, “That’s it. That’s what we’re all about.” Filling in the Gaps FasTracKids exists to give kids what’s missing at school. The ..read more

Can you imagine? Today’s parents can’t even envision the specifics of the jobs our children will pursue – the jobs for which are so dedicated to preparing them. But we do know that the high-paying jobs of tomorrow’s American economy will be overwhelmingly engineering intensive. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, engineering is expected to grow enormously as a profession over the next decade and to offer more than 125,000 jobs each year by 2026. Unfortunately, though we can’t imagine what our sons and daughters will do at their dream jobs, we’re all too aware that American elementary ..read more

A Spike in Failures The end of 2018 brought to a close the first five years of Common Core standards in New York high schools. After an initial drop in Regents exam pass rates, we thought we were out of the woods. Beginning in 2014-15, Common Core’s second year, scores improved and remained stable. Now, however, we’re seeing an unexpected increase in failure rates among high-school students. For the 2017-18 school year, Regents failure rates increased from 25% to 30% on the Algebra 1 test and from 16% to 21% on the ELA Exam. Uncertainty & Speculation NYS Math and ELA Common Core Standards ..read more

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article exploring the lengths to which some parents will go to improve their children’s performance in NYC gifted-and-talented testing. While this piece raises some relevant issues, it fails to provide alternative solutions to gaps in public education and to the intensely competitive state of the city’s G&T education programs. From our perspective, companies like ours exist because children and their families need help, and our responsibility is to provide the best tools possible to aid in their pursuit of success. More than just Test Prep The ..read more

FasTracKids is a gifted program (for gifted and potentially gifted students) designed to enhance the further intellectual development of naturally curious 3-to 7-year-olds. This STEAM+ Enrichment program is the culmination of years of research and has garnered a track record of proven successes in helping children achieve outstanding results in school and beyond! A Broad Base for Learning  This invaluable 2-year supplemental enrichment program exposes children to more than 12 different subject areas, including Astronomy, Biology, Natural Science, Economics, Art & Creativity, Creative ..read more