Lehighton Area School Board heard glowing teacher reviews Monday night on the efficacy of its IXL pilot program during its monthly workshop session.

The district voted in January to pilot the online learning tool in grades 6-8 at Lehighton Area Middle School through the end of April at a cost of $595. An interactive learning site, IXL offers curriculum and interactive questions for a variety of subjects including math, English language arts, science and social studies.

Megan Burdick, a senior educational consultant with IXL, presented an overview of the program to the board.

Burdick highlighted the program’s five key components: a curriculum with personalized guidance, instructional resources and class engagement tools, an assessment suite, data analytics, and professional development for teachers.

Research touted by Burdick suggests that students using IXL for at least 30 minutes a week see significant gains on standardized tests. For instance, in Pennsylvania, she claimed that students using IXL saw an average improvement of 25 points in math over the PSSA exams.

Following Burdick’s presentation, two Lehighton teachers, Theresa Kokinda and Allison Tirpak, shared their experiences with the program during the pilot phase.

“I’ve used a lot of different programs, and IXL really helps me take the kids at the level that I have and get them help with what they need,” said Kokinda. “I’m not expecting all my kids to get a SmartScore of 100, but I want my kids to show growth, and that’s what’s important to me. And this program provides that opportunity.”

Tirpak, an eighth-grade ELA instructor, echoed Kokinda’s sentiments. “This is not a new program to me,” she explained. “I’ve always been particularly fond of IXL, because of its diverse and immense set of skills.”

Tirpak went on to praise the program’s alignment with the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s assessment anchors, making it a valuable resource for test preparation.

“The data also helps to see what students know what they’ve learned and what they’re struggling with,” Tirpak added. “I only use the program for short portions of my class, but I’ve seen a lot of variety in the question types, which is great.”

Jeremy Glaush, a board member, inquired about data privacy, specifically how information about student performance is shared with third-party vendors. Burdick assured the board that IXL allows districts to tailor the data-sharing agreements, ensuring that only authorized information is released.

“We have customers who participate in contracts that say they completely do not want to share their customer information with anybody,” Burdick said. “We can tailor that to be as specific as you possibly can.”

Another board member, Joy Beers, emphasized the importance of collecting feedback from parents.

“This program was seen by some as very demoralizing, and it was kind of creating these emotional situations in children,” Beers said.

In an effort to gauge parental and student sentiment toward the IXL program, Lehighton has distributed a survey to parents. The results of this survey, district officials said, along with the positive experiences shared by teachers during the meeting, will be used by the board to make a more informed decision on whether to implement IXL districtwide.