The people in charge of the program wanted to encourage kids to pursue math at the middle school level. And the competition is designed by engineers to fill a gap that they were seeing.

After they are scored, the top 10 individually ranked kids go into a head-to-head competition called Countdown. It is kind of like Jeopardy.

Many of my students are now looking to the high school level, and this competition has inspired them to continue with their interest in math. Math is going to be even more import as we get further into the technology age.

ROE is good for some kids, but hasn't been successful at our school,

It's such a huge event. It's the place for middle school kids to go.

High school kids always think they know what's going on, ... they needed numbers, not stories.