This blog post is for Parents considering or Using the IXL Math Program

IXL is an online learning Platform primarily offering educational practice for K-12th graders. The company also provides analytical tools to track student and classroom performance and identify areas for academic improvement with each student. IXL Learning offers practice skills for math, language arts, science, social studies, and Spanish. IXL is used in more than 190 countries by 7 million students.

And as a Math tutor, I love using IXL for my students. It has a lot of great features. The Questions are focussed at testing their understanding at all levels. Assigning and Assessing Homework has never been this easy. It is a wonderful tool for Elementary and Middle Grades.

And I was really shocked to see so many negative reviews by Parents.

Well, as a tutor, I never really rely on the explanations that IXL provides when the students get them wrong and I don’t expect them to learn from them. Also, I really don’t take the points it awards the students seriously.

For me, it is more like a testing, practicing, and a revising tool and it does it so well.

So, Here are some ways to use IXL without getting frustrated

How to Use IXL 

It is a supplementary tool. My suggestion is to supplement IXL with Khan Academy lectures. The one thing Khan Academy isn’t good at is the lack of Practice Questions and IXL fill that gap.  Khan Academy is free and IXL costs $80 per year.

How to Get a 100 on IXL

The Smart Score: Well, your child is doing great, got all the questions right, has full 100 points, but gets a question wrong and the points dropped drastically. That’s the frustration most parents and children have.

I would advise you to aim for 85 %, just that, that is sufficient. Or I would even go to an extent and say, Ignore it.

And as I said in the beginning, IXL is just a supplementary tool. Given any day, I will definitely choose to solve problems with a pen and paper over any online tool.

In my opinion, Reasoning and writing the steps involved in a problem are as important as arriving at a solution to it. IXL does the latter job and as a parent, just make sure you do the other one.