Congratulations to this year’s IXL Elite 100! Our eighth annual Elite 100 list recognizes remarkable teachers who made extraordinary efforts to close achievement gaps and help students grow, despite disruptions in education during the 2020-21 academic year.
We’ve selected the list of 100 from 800,000 teachers worldwide who use IXL in their classrooms. The 2021 Elite 100 reside in 33 U.S. states and territories, as well as in Mexico.
“The past few school years have been some of the most challenging, but they are also clear reminders that nothing is more important to a child’s education than support from great teachers. Dedicated educators have engaged, encouraged and empowered students so that they receive the best education possible,” said Paul Mishkin, CEO of IXL Learning. “This year’s Elite 100 is an outstanding example of how educators can combine the powers of empathy and personalized instruction to make a lasting, positive impact in learners’ lives.”
How Elite 100 teachers use IXL to support students
Following a year of disrupted learning, schools anticipated that student knowledge levels would vary widely when class began. In anticipation of these changes, Elite 100 educators used IXL to identify where students stood, personalize instruction, and recover unfinished learning.
The Elite 100 used IXL’s adaptive assessment, the Real-Time Diagnostic, to determine students’ grade-level proficiency in math and language arts, and quickly identify knowledge gaps throughout the year. Then, teachers used personalized action plans generated by the diagnostic to direct students to the IXL skills that would help them grow.
“I realized that I could use IXL to fill in my students’ knowledge gaps and misconceptions from previous years through the Real-Time Diagnostic,” said Sydney Kauten from Gladbrook-Reinbeck Elementary in Reinbeck, Iowa. “Most of my class started school below grade level last year, so it was reassuring to learn that the interventions I implemented with IXL resulted in most of my students ending the year above grade level!”
Teachers also leveraged skills from IXL’s comprehensive curriculum to supplement classroom instruction, provide support for students struggling with specific concepts, and help learners catch up. Using IXL Analytics, Elite 100 teachers gained insights that informed their learning recovery efforts: The easy-to-use reports helped teachers pinpoint student trouble spots and track progress.
“One of the many things that I love about IXL is that it allows students to build foundational math skills before they jump into deeper learning with word problems,” said Melissa Massingale from Sallisaw Public School in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. “I have used multiple online platforms in my classroom over the years, but IXL is by far one of the most user-friendly skill-building programs that I’ve ever implemented.”
See the full list of Elite 100 teachers and learn more about their strategies here.
And follow along on IXL’s Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages to see more stories from this year’s #IXLElite100 teachers!
