IXL is designed to guide students toward authentic skill mastery. And a big part of that is the IXL SmartScore!
When students work on skills in IXL’s curriculum, the IXL SmartScore accurately measures their current understanding of each topic, and ensures that they are challenged at just the right level. While working toward their SmartScore goal, students learn from their mistakes, and have unlimited opportunities to grow!
And research shows that this approach works. When students consistently reach proficiency (SmartScore of 80) and mastery (SmartScore of 100) on IXL skills, schools see as much as a 16-point bump on state assessments.
Want to see how the SmartScore supports mastery-based learning? Let’s dive in:
Challenging students at just the right level
As students work through skills, the question difficulty adapts based on their level of understanding to meet students exactly where they are and help them grow!
When a student answers a question correctly and their SmartScore increases, the following questions will become more difficult to help them steadily build upon their knowledge. When a student answers a question incorrectly, they’ll receive a step-by-step walkthrough of how to solve the problem they missed. Their SmartScore also decreases, and the following questions will become easier. This gives students the time and support they need to address any learning gaps and work their way up to a solid understanding of the topic.
Unlimited opportunities to grow
In traditional scoring systems, each missed question becomes a permanent deduction from a student’s percentage score. The IXL SmartScore is completely different—it gives every student the chance to achieve proficiency and mastery.
Even when a student misses a question and their SmartScore decreases, they can always continue answering questions and increase their SmartScore. Students are empowered to try new things and learn from their mistakes in an environment that will give them endless opportunities to improve and reach their SmartScore goal.
Achieving mastery
When a student has earned a SmartScore of 100 on an IXL skill, it means that they have mastered the topic. This is designed to be challenging, and represents a truly impressive accomplishment!
Because reaching mastery is challenging, it’s not always the right goal for every skill or every student. If a student is ready for the task, here’s what they can expect along the way.
When students reach a SmartScore of 90 in a skill, they enter the Challenge Zone, which is a chance to show whether they’ve mastered the topic. Questions within the Challenge Zone will be especially rigorous, and students must prove that they can consistently answer them correctly in order to achieve mastery. Throughout the Challenge Zone, SmartScore increases for correct answers will be smaller, and drops after incorrect answers will be larger. This gives students more time to explore the topic before they reach mastery.
Strategies for SmartScore success
Check out the SmartScore guides for both teachers and parents, full of strategies to help students toward success. And don’t miss the powerful insights in IXL Analytics, which use the IXL SmartScore to show exactly what students understand, and where you can help them improve.
Set good goals. Keep in mind that a SmartScore of 80 indicates proficiency in the topic, while 90 represents excellence. Either of these may be a perfect stopping point, especially when students are learning a new topic! A SmartScore of 100 represents complete mastery of the concept, and can be used as an extra credit opportunity, or a reason to celebrate.
Show that mistakes are part of learning. It’s important for students to develop a growth mindset, and the IXL SmartScore can help. Encourage students to read the answer explanations and think through their misunderstanding before tackling the next question!
Take breaks when needed.Students’ progress in IXL is automatically saved, so they can always take a brain break and come back later. Plus, if they want more background on a given topic, students can watch math and English language arts video tutorials, review Lessons for key 3rd grade math through Geometry topics, and follow their in-skill recommendations at the bottom of the screen!
Teacher-approved SmartScore tips
Get the inside scoop on the SmartScore from IXL Senior Professional Learning Specialist Jen Rinkes, based on her 20+ years in the classroom:
Learners have reached an incredible new milestone! Since 2007, students have collectively answered more than 100,000,000,000 questions on IXL. We'd like to extend a huge congratulations to each learner who contributed to this amazing feat!
A skill is mastered when the SmartScore reaches 100, but the number of questions it takes to master a skill varies with every student. To continuously motivate students, IXL recommends setting other practice milestones along the way to mastery. A score of 80 is proficient, and a score of 90 is considered excellent.
From 70-90, students are refining their skills and building from mid-level to high-level rigor questions. By the time a student reaches a SmartScore of 90, they have achieved “excellence” by showing they are consistently capable of working through high-rigor questions.
A score of 80 is considered proficiency and 90 is excellence. Both scores show a strong understanding of a skill and may be the perfect stopping point. Mastery (a score of 100) is an extra challenge! It involves tackling the Challenge Zone, which has the most difficult questions in a skill.
Inadequate Feedback: While IXL provides immediate feedback on incorrect answers, it often lacks detailed explanations or alternative strategies for solving problems. This limits students' ability to learn from their mistakes and hinders their overall growth.
As always, a diagnostic level indicates a student's working grade level—for example, a level of 800 indicates readiness to work on eighth grade level skills. When the numbers appear as a range, this means that the Diagnostic is still narrowing down the student's exact learning level.
For example, a score of 350 indicates that a student understands about 50% of 3rd-grade material and a score of 400 indicates readiness to begin working on 4th-grade skills. These levels range from 0-1300, with 0-50 representing pre-K, 50-100 kindergarten, and 1300 representing the end of 12th grade.
For example, a score of 650 indicates that the student has acquired about 50% of 6th-grade material, whereas a score of 700 indicates that the student is ready to learn 7th-grade material.
Grade level guide: 100 = 1st grade, 200 = 2nd grade, 300 = 3rd grade, 400 - 4th grade, 500 = 5th grade, 600 = 6th grade, 700 = 7th grade, 800 = 8th grade, and 900 = 9th grade. By clicking on the IXL image above or the word IXL, students will be forwarded to the log in page.
IXL Learning is an educational technology company headquartered in San Mateo, that delivers an immersive e-learning content and digital curricula for students in all grades, in math, English language arts, science, and social studies.
Depending on your student's grade level, it will take two, four, or six minutes of inactivity for the timer to pause. What exactly is the SmartScore? The SmartScore is based on IXL's proprietary algorithm and is the best possible measure of how well a student understands a skill.
When you pick a skill, the difficulty level will be picked by default to be the level that corresponds to proficiency within the skill (aka a SmartScore of 80). This is marked by the blue/green ribbon next to the level name - all levels that are at or beyond proficiency will have the ribbon.
Infinite! There are over 8,500 skills and unlimited computer-generated questions, so there's always fresh and compelling content! With IXL's unique scoring algorithm, questions adapt to the student's skill level to ensure the student is constantly challenged and engaged.
Grade level guide: 100 = 1st grade, 200 = 2nd grade, 300 = 3rd grade, 400 - 4th grade, 500 = 5th grade, 600 = 6th grade, 700 = 7th grade, 800 = 8th grade, and 900 = 9th grade. By clicking on the IXL image above or the word IXL, students will be forwarded to the log in page.
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