This document provides an abstract and introduction for a research study comparing the math learning platforms i-Ready, IXL, and Prodigy. The study aims to determine which platform has the greatest causal effect on student performance on the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The methodology will analyze student performance data from districts using one of the three platforms and compare to control districts not using the platforms. The goal is to identify the most effective program for supporting student achievement and closing learning gaps.

1. A comparative analysis of i-Ready, IXL, and Prodigy
learning software programs
Ernest J-A. Conerly, Christopher L. Jarrett, and Cristina M. Ryter
Biscayne College of Liberal Arts, Social Science and Education,
St. Thomas University
EDU 650: Practicum in Instructional Design & Technology
Dr. Timothy Stafford
April 25, 2021

2. Abstract
● Teachers are required to differentiate instructions in order to meet the
individual needs of students.
● Math learning platforms are marketed to educators claiming to be self-
paced, data-driven, and researched-based theoretical frameworks that meet
the needs of each student.
● Research examines three well-known math learning platforms, i-Ready,
IXL, and Prodigy, with learning theories that support the success of each
program.

3. Abstract Cont’d
● All three programs offer individual student differentiation and academic
improvements.
● No conclusive data on which program produces the greatest result in student
growth.
● This study will make a recommendation for which program demonstrates
higher student growth.

4. Introduction
● The average National Assessment of Educational Progress’ (NAEP) math
assessment score in 2012 for 17-year-olds was not significantly different
from the score in 1973 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013,
p.29).
● Academic learning gaps are not closing as quickly as NCLB and ESSA
planned.
● i-Ready, IXL, and Prodigy have gained popularity because of online
learning which promise to achieve learning gains.
● This lends itself to research question, What is the causal-comparative effect
of math-based e-learning platforms, i-Ready, IXL, or Prodigy based on
student performance on the math portions of the NAEP?

5. Background
● COVID-19 has accelerated the pace at which schools have moved towards
digital resources.
● Districts are under pressure to integrate technology.
● Increased mandates for differentiating instruction, given rise to educational
software resources marketed as “evidence-based” and “data-driven” to prove
their effectiveness for increasing student achievement.
● Research evaluating the effectiveness of these e-learning academic programs
has proven difficult to achieve.

6. Background Cont’d
● Difficult to complete a true controlled research study due to school
reluctance.
● Important to gather as much field tested data as possible to ensure that
districts are providing students with the most effective resources available.

7. Problem Needing to be Solved
● There is a lack of academic progress and achievement gains in math from
American students compared to European and Asian peers.
● Results from 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
stated, the U.S. placed an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math.
● This problem is due to the large number of unmastered skills that contribute
to a lack of proficiency on standardized assessments.

8. Problems Needing to be Solved Cont’d
● High-stakes testing has deepened the lack of academic progress by forcing
chronically low achievers to reach unattainable growth standards without
providing necessary resources to close learning gaps and reach proficiency
to succeed on math portions of mandated tests.
● Data from testing fueled an over-testing explosion but student growth did
not improve.
● Which led to teaching to the test, spending more time and attention on test
preparation, creating a never-ending cycle of breeding more tests.

9. Purpose of the Research
● To analyze the three math educational software platforms, i-Ready, IXL, and
Prodigy improve student achievement on the NAEP.
● Math is often the hardest of the 4 core subjects to differentiate, however,
math learning platforms are marketed to educators claiming to be self-paced,
data-driven, researched-based theoretical frameworks that meet the needs of
each student.

10. Purpose of Research Cont’d
● The research will determine which platform will have the greater impact on
a student's overall growth and performance on standardized assessments,
● Which will provide a scope of focus to determine whether that particular
type of instructional technology should be used within classrooms.

11. Research Question
● What is the causal-comparative effect of math-based elearning platforms, i-
Ready, IXL, or Prodigy on student performance on the math portion of the
National Assessment of Education Progress?

12. Hypothesis
● H11: All three e-learning platforms, i-Ready, IXL, and Prodigy will have a
greater effect than the control group.
○ H0: The control group will do better than the three e-learning platforms,
i-Ready, IXL, and Prodigy.

13. Hypothesis Cont’d
● H2: Prodigy uniquely applies the most learning theories to its platform,
intertwining cognitivism and behaviorism which will lead to self efficacy
and have a greater impact than i-Ready, IXL, and the control group.
○ H0: All three e-learning platforms are essentially the same and none are
better than the others.

14. Literature Review
● This literature review examines how standardized testing gave rise to the e-learning
industry because of the need to differentiate instruction, fill learning gaps, and prepare
students for standardized assessments given in each state and nationally every four
years. The study looks to identify whether or not e-learning platforms, specifically
math-based, are meeting the expectations that brought them into existence. Are students
making substantial academic gains on standardized assessments after learning, playing,
or practicing on these platforms? If so, how are these platforms accomplishing these
improvements?

15. Review of the Historical Literature
● Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results from 2015, the U.S.
placed an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math. Among the 35 members of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA
initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math. (Desilver, 2017).
● Congress requiring states to bring all students to the “proficient level” on state tests by the
2013-14 school year, although each state was able to decide, individually, what
“proficiency” would look like(Klein, 2015)..
● A new never-ending cycle began where tests bred more tests, including practice tests and
test preparation. States and school districts start conducting more tests to use as test
preparation and predictors to determine a student's scoring ability on the mandated testing
(Duncan, 2013).

16. Review of the Current Literature
● According to former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the need for data-driven
instruction and differentiation, coupled with increased teacher scrutiny because of the
accountability measure being required of school districts receiving federal funding,
created a huge need in e-learning resources to truly differentiate instruction(Duncan,
2013).
● Micheal Petrilli (2011) wrote: The greatest challenge facing America’s schools today isn’t
the budget crisis, or standardized testing, or “teacher quality.” It’s the enormous variation
in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom.

17. Review of the Current Literature
● Mathias Decuypere, Emiliano Grimaldi & Paolo Landri (2021)Several factors over the
last decade, specifically COVID-19, have seen the development of platforms tailored to
primary and secondary schools specifically constructed for the field of higher education;
from digital environments designed to manage pupils’ learning to environments focused
on the monitoring of their behavior; and from digital spaces bundling a variety of
functionalities to interfaces with a more singular function: no matter the focus, there
seems to exist a corresponding digital platform used within the educational field.

18. IXL
● IXL is based on the drill and practice function of instructional technology.
● Drill and practice is rooted in the theory of behaviorism, focusing on repetition of
stimulus-response practice and the concept of reinforcement (Lim et al., 2012).

19. i-Ready
● According to Hughes (2018) i-Ready is an adaptive diagnostic assessment and
personalized instructional tutorial tool that places each student in a personalized
learning path through online lessons.
● i-Ready’s tutorial program is rooted in explicit instruction; clear and concise tracking
of growth to determine which students need additional help or interventions which
lends itself to the cognitivist theory, learning focusing on the internal process and
connections that take place during learning

20. Prodigy
● Prodigy is a practice website and app for grades K–8 that addresses standards-based
skills and testing- based concepts in Math for both home and school.
● Prodigy is based on the gamification-theory, which is the use of game elements in non-
game contexts, and is increasingly being implemented in both student and organizational
learning initiatives(Kampen, 2019).

21. Review of this Study In Light of the Reviewed
Literature (the gap)
● The central argument to all three learning platform programs are that they
are supported by research-based educational theories that lead to increased
academic progress. Each platform has the ability to differentiate instruction
through personalized learning plans based on diagnostic examinations that
students take

22. The Gap cont’d
● Where all the programs overlap is a combination between two learning theories of
cognitive and behavioral learning. According to Kendra Cherry (2019)
● The combination is called Social Learning theory or Social Cognitive Learning theory.
the theory considers how environmental, behaviorism and cognitive factors interact to
influence human learning and behavior.

23. The Gap cont’d
● Alberts Bandura's, the author of Social Cognitive theory
While the behavioral theory of learning suggested that all learning was the result of
associations formed by conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment, Bandura's social
learning theory proposed that learning can also occur simply by observing the actions of
others. His theory added a social element, arguing that people can learn new information
and behaviors by watching other people. Known as observational learning,

24. The Gap cont’d
● Bandura explanation of observational and modeling processes
● Four steps: attention, retention, reproduction and motivation,

25. The Gap cont’d
● At the core of all three is platform retention, the ability to store information.
● IXL and i-Ready overlap at step reproduction, or the ability to perform the behavior you
observed. Each of these programs have explicit instruction, tutoring and practice built
into their programs, so that after a while the students are able to reproduce what they have
learned.

26. The Gap cont’d
● IXL and Prodigy overlap in motivation or the stimulus that reinforces
behaviors. Both programs have built in extrinsic motivational interfaces that
are designed to help the students focus and want to get better at math.
● With Prodigy’s unique gamification style, it has the greatest potential to
keep student’s attention or the ability to focus on the content, which Bandura
states it has to be interesting.

27. Methodology
● We intend to analyze records and artifacts including district data from the
previous NAEP administration among districts that implemented one of the
three math programs in the year following the next NAEP assessment in
2021. The 2025 NAEP administration’s data will be compared to the district
data for 2021, the year prior to the treatment.

28. Type of Research
This research will be quantitative, measuring data at the ordinal level.

29. Research Design
● Causal-comparative
● Groups are chosen through pre-existing data from the NAEP assessment.
● Treatment groups are exposed to learning platforms and compared to groups
that are not using the e-learning platforms (Key Elements of a Research
Proposal Quantitative Design, n.d.).

30. Data Gathering Procedures
1. Identify districts that are frequent participants in the NAEP assessment, having
taken the last three tests.
1. Select districts that have adopted either of the independent variables (i-Ready,
IXL, or Prodigy) district-wide for the first time in 2022, the year after the last
NAEP assessment and establish a data-sharing agreement with those districts.

31. Data Gathering Procedures
3. Classify each district as performing in the lowest quartile, 2nd quartile, 3rd
quartile, or upper quartile.
3. Randomly select twelve treatment districts - one adoption district for each of the
three programs and each of the four performance quartiles. A homogeneous
subgroup comparison will be completed for each quartile to strengthen the
research sample. (Salkind, 2010)

32. Data Gathering Procedures
5. Randomly select four control districts - one from each performance quartile that did not
adopt either of the treatment programs.
5. After the next NAEP assessment in 2025, district personnel will provide NAEP data to
the research team for an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The second NAEP district
average will serve as the dependent variable.

33. 1. Determine the 2022 average NAEP percentile among fourth and eighth
graders for the students in each district to serve as the baseline.
1. Determine the average NAEP percentile for the students in each district after
the 2025 administration.
Data analysis Procedures

34. Data analysis Procedures
3. Run a regression between: the independent variables - the programs
implemented, or the control with no program used; and the dependent
variables - the average NAEP percentile for the district.
3. Complete an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to examine the differences
in the mean values of the dependent variables (Analysis of covariance
(ANCOVA) 2020).

35. Data Analysis Procedures
5. Use the ANCOVA analysis within each grade level and each of the four
quartiles to determine the program that yields districts with the greatest
positive change in each category.

36. Final Summary of the Proposal
With the research conducted and data collected, we expect that all the three e-
learning platforms will have a greater effect on student data than student groups
that are not receiving e-learning supplemental resources. We further anticipate
that Prodigy will have a greater impact than the other treatment programs. The
goal is to highlight each e-learning platform for its specific capacities to
determine the most effective program for supporting achievement and closing
learning gaps.

37. References
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38. References Cont’d
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39. Reference Cont’d
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40. Reference Cont’d
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