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Quakertown administrators move to end broad IXL use after student, parent complaints
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Summary
District leaders said students repeatedly raised concerns about overuse of IXL, reported the program costs about $65,000, and signaled an administrative decision to stop widespread use next year while preserving limited licenses for targeted students.
Quakertown Community SD administrators said they will discontinue broad districtwide use of the online practice platform IXL after students and parents raised repeated complaints about how it was being used and about data quality.
Doctor Hochoff, who led the discussion at the April 13 committee meeting, said students raised the issue in interviews and that she had received multiple emails from students asking the district to "just ban IXL." She said the district paid about $65,000 for the program and that, in its current rollout, "it's not being used the way that we would like it to be, and the kids hate it." The district intends to stop using IXL in its current, mass implementation next school year while keeping limited licenses available for individual students or specialized groups.
Why it matters: Board members and parents said IXL had become routine homework and, in some classrooms, a graded assignment or a placement input, which they said produced negative instructional effects and confusing grade reports. Amanda (a committee member) described a personal example: her son's math grade fell because three IXL checkpoints were missing. Several members also said students reported being assigned large volumes of IXL practice that crowded out other learning and led to gaming the system.
What administrators said they found: Hochoff told the committee that students and some teachers reported the program was being used in ways the district had advised against (for example, as graded homework or a substitute for classroom instruction). She said the deployment had not always matched directives sent to staff and that anecdotal problems included students asking family members to complete work or using generative AI to answer items. "I have since finishing this round of interviews with students, received, to date, 11 emails from students asking me if I would be interested in getting rid of IXL," she said.
Instructional and personnel implications: The superintendent'level goals and some teachers' SPMs (staff performance measures) used IXL data this year. Hochoff told the committee that keeping IXL in place for the remainder of the year was necessary for teachers who had tied that data to evaluations, but that for next year the district intends to pivot away from mass use. Administration said it will communicate the intent to teachers and principals, work individually with teachers who have used IXL successfully, and offer coaching and alternative data-collection tools.
Next steps: The district plans to share a message with staff explaining the findings and the rationale for the change, offer supports for teachers to demonstrate they met SPMs without mass IXL use, and study other options for in-class assessment and targeted interventions. There was no formal board vote recorded at the meeting; the decision described by administration is an internal direction and will be communicated to staff and principals.
Quotes: "It's not being used the way that we would like it to be, and the kids hate it," Doctor Hochoff said. Amanda said of her son: "his math grade showed an F because of 3 missing IXLs." Hochoff added: "Some of them are just flat out. I think I shared one today with Kelly. It was just like, please ban IXL."
The committee discussed alternatives including tighter guardrails for teacher use, more coach-led professional development, and the possibility of replacing IXL with other benchmarks or building stronger MTSS interventions. Administrators emphasized the need to balance teacher evaluation requirements for the current year with plans to change tools for next year.
