AoPS is very excited to announce a new program from MATHCOUNTS for students in grades 3 through 5! This is already exciting news, but it's particularly special for us to also share how this new program will come to be.
The entire AoPS family is thrilled that our founder, Richard Rusczyk, has been awarded the 2025 Courage & Civility Award, funded by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. This award recognizes “leaders who aim high and pursue solutions with courage and civility.” We might be a bit biased, but we sure think Richard fits this description.
As part of the award, Richard will direct a $5 million grant to fund the charity of his choice. It is no surprise to us that Richard chose MATHCOUNTS as the recipient of these funds: Richard has been deeply involved with MATHCOUNTS ever since he was a middle school student participating in the MATHCOUNTS Competition Series in 1985, and students, parents, and teachers have been meeting Richard in person at the RTX MATHCOUNTS National Competition for over 20 years. AoPS and MATHCOUNTS have been long-time partners in helping middle school students develop their potential: the MATHCOUNTS Trainer app, MATHCOUNTS Minis videos and worksheets, and the OPLET teachers resource are some of the many resources AoPS provides to help MATHCOUNTS students improve their problem solving skills.
“MATHCOUNTS is the most important program in the U.S. for eager middle school math students,” says Richard. “For hundreds of thousands of kids, including me way back in 1983, MATHCOUNTS has been their introduction not just to intriguing, challenging math problems, but also to the rich community of math enthusiasts that these students will be part of throughout the rest of their education and their careers.”
MATHCOUNTS will use Richard's generous gift to build on their vast experience and success working with middle school students to establish a new program for students in grades 3-5! The goal of this new program will be to build the foundational skills that elementary school students need to become confident learners and have greater success in middle school math. AoPS already is a leader in grade 1-5 student learning with our Beast Academy books and online platform, and we're very excited to be able to expand our partnership with MATHCOUNTS to help support this new program for elementary school students.
The new MATHCOUNTS grade 3-5 program is still in the early stages of development, so we don't have a lot of details to share yet. We encourage you to visit the MATHCOUNTS website to sign up so that you or your school can be among the first to get updates on the launch of the new program.
On behalf of all of us at AoPS, thank you to Richard and to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos for their generous support in making this new program a success! We can't wait to see it help to discover, inspire, and train the great problem solvers of the next generation.
