Free! NCES Kids' Zone focuses on the two biggest strengths of the National Center for Education Statistics: education and mathematics. Guidance counselors and concerned educators (or parents) can find information -- enrollment numbers and demographics for example -- on local public and private K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Students might enjoy the mixing of math and collegiate trivia in the Grab Bag section, make their own custom graphs, or hone their understanding of probability with the Chances dice game. (Note to stats teachers: this is a great supplement for teaching the Central Limit Theorem!) But what really attracts us to the Kids Zone is the Dare to Compare feature. Users can generate and take a custom quiz with up to 20 questions under a single subject (civics, economics, geography, history, math, and science) and grade level (4th, 8th, or 12th), and receive a detailed score report with the option to compare answers with others from various regions in the U.S. or around the world. Fortunately, EdSurge has a few sharp tools in the shed, but we came away disheartened by many of the national averages. Won't you dare to compare?
