My Take
It’s terrible. Avoid it if possible.
How I Use It
I’ve been teaching for 24 years and this is, hands down, the worst math curriculum I’ve ever seen. First of all, it’s nothing like the pics in the common sense review; that doesn’t even look like the same program.
First of all, the examples and instruction are very confusing. Even as a teacher, I often don’t understand what they’re trying to say, so imagine being a 7th grader and having to figure this out. Then, in the practice, they assign far too much practice for each section. There are often dozens and dozens of problems with the exact same format, to the point where my students wonder if it will ever end. When you add on the fact that any tiny mistake takes away progress and adds more problems, the discouragement is a huge problem. Kids just give up a lot of the time because they feel like they are stuck in this forever.
The word problems are, at best, confusing and bizarre. At worst, they’re borderline inappropriate like the problem where a girl gets dragged by her dogs. Sometimes they don’t make sense, and will give you an answer that is negative, for example, when it’s the amount of days and it wouldn’t have made any sense to have negative days.
If kids don’t have parents who are good at math, or private tutors, they don’t finish this because it’s so confusing and doesn’t actually teach any of the concepts, so they keep getting things wrong and getting more problems assigned.
This very much feels like a robot and not a human is teaching you. It cannot have been designed by teachers and definitely wasn’t tested on real students.