IXL and Montgomery County Public Schools Expand Partnership to Enhance Secondary Math Education

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Sep 12, 2024, 10:54 ET

Maryland's largest school district will now use IXL's all-in-one, personalized learning platform to boost student achievement in Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry courses

ROCKVILLE, Md., Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- IXL, the award-winning personalized learning platform used by more than 15 million students, is proud to strengthen its partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), the largest public school district in Maryland. As part of the collaboration, MCPS is expanding its use of IXL Math to personalize learning for students taking Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry courses. This effort will accelerate learning for 67,000 middle and high school students, and give more educators across the district resources to differentiate daily instruction. IXL is currently used by more than 60 percent of K-12 school districts in Maryland, reaching approximately 280,000 learners.

"Montgomery County Public Schools is a trailblazer in providing equitable and personalized learning experiences that empower every student to succeed," said Paul Mishkin, CEO of IXL Learning. "We're excited to expand our partnership and continue supporting the district's mission to unlock each student's full potential in mathematics."

Montgomery County Public Schools, home to 211 K-12 schools and 160,000 students, initially adopted IXL Math in 2023 to support 36,000 students in grades 6-8. Educators quickly recognized IXL's strengths, including its adaptability to individual learning needs, power to help teachers effectively differentiate instruction and robust tools for district-wide progress monitoring. IXL was also chosen because its skills align perfectly to Maryland's state standards, the district's Illustrative Mathematics textbooks and the NWEA MAP Growth assessment. After seeing strong results, MCPS expanded IXL's use to high school math courses, including Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry. IXL now plays a pivotal role in enhancing math education for over 40 percent of MCPS students.

An innovative, personalized solution backed by research
With limited instructional time and growing class sizes, educators need reliable tools to effectively differentiate math instruction. IXL meets this need by providing thousands of curriculum and instructional resources, actionable analytics, and a state-of-the-art assessment suite on one platform. Each component is uniquely powerful on its own, but together they create a unified solution that accelerates math learning.

In fact, research has shown the impact of IXL Math on academic achievement in Maryland: Schools using IXL Math outperformed comparable schools on the MCAP math assessment, achieving proficiency rates more than 7 percentage points higher than those using other solutions.

Comprehensive curriculum for deeper learning
IXL's comprehensive PK-12 math curriculum contains more than 12,000 standards-aligned skills that connect to, support, and build on one another to meet any learning need. The curriculum promotes rigor by enabling students to develop a conceptual understanding of math, build procedural fluency and tackle challenging problems that have real-world applications. Each skill is adaptive, adjusting in difficulty to ensure students are perfectly challenged. Based on students' previous work, IXL generates personalized recommendations in real time that guide learners to skills that will help them make the most progress.

Additionally, IXL offers a wealth of instructional resources that keep students engaged. More than 2,800 video tutorials for Grades 1 through Precalculus match one-to-one with each IXL skill to support students when they're working independently and ensure they have the guidance to learn with confidence. Students also receive immediate feedback while working on any IXL skill. If they answer a question incorrectly, IXL provides the correct answer along with a step-by-step explanation of how to solve the specific problem they missed. This shows students precisely where they went wrong and empowers them to self-remediate.

Accurately assess knowledge in real time
Testing is crucial for measuring student progress, but traditional assessments are often time-consuming and unreliable. To address this challenge, IXL offers the IXL LevelUp^™ Assessment Suite, the only unified solution that enables students to move seamlessly from fast, focused assessment back into meaningful instruction and practice. The LevelUp assessment solution provides a clear path forward for every student by pinpointing growth areas and generating actionable insights to inform decision making.

The assessment suite includes:

The LevelUp™ Math Benchmark Assessmen t and IXL Diagnostic help educators confidently identify students for intervention, lead organization-wide improvement efforts, track student growth, and more—without waiting for official state testing results. Both generate personalized action plans with recommended skills from IXL's curriculum, helping educators rapidly differentiate and accelerate learning.
The nationally normed Universal Math Screener flags students who are at risk of not meeting grade-level standards in 20 minutes, so educators can quickly plan for intervention.

IXL Analytics also provides real-time insights that allow educators to identify trouble spots and monitor performance, so they can respond to student needs faster and facilitate meaningful growth.
Administrators can use IXL District Analytics and IXL School Analytics to track student progress and teacher engagement to improve IXL's impact on their school or district. With robust grouping and filtering capabilities, district leaders can analyze data across schools, courses, teachers, student demographics, and more. This enables administrators to zero in on what matters most, extract valuable insights, and take informed action.

About IXL
Currently used by 15 million students and in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts, IXL is an all-inclusive educational platform that provides a comprehensive PK-12 curriculum and instructional resources, actionable analytics and a state-of-the-art assessment suite. Available in 54 languages, IXL's end-to-end teaching and learning solution supports personalized instruction in math, English language arts, science, social studies and Spanish. With more than 150 billion questions asked and answered around the world, IXL is helping schools and parents successfully boost student achievement. The IXL Learning family of products also includes Rosetta Stone, Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, TPT, inglés.com, FrenchDictionary.com, Wyzant, Vocabulary.com, ABCya, Education.com and Carson Dellosa Education. To learn more about IXL, visit www.ixl.com, facebook.com/IXL and x.com/IXLLearning.