Pearson Successmaker Math Efficacy Study 2009-10 Final Report

SuccessMaker Math RCT Gatti Evaluation Inc. 9-15-10often used the reports to inform classroom instruction, to identify students for remediation and todiscover off-task behavior, as well as to monitor and report student progress.3rd grade teacher: “At the last parent-teacher conference, I ran off the areas of difficult reportfor each parent. They liked it.”3rd grade teacher: “I have used those [reports] for leveling students, to split them into groups.”5th grade teacher: “I look at how many questions they have answered. Sometimes they havebeen on there for 20 minutes and answered 2 questions. I do look at that. It tells me who is on itand [who is] just sitting there.”5th grade teacher: “When I would see the students struggling the next day I could go back totheir last session and see what their score was. I could say, oh this was not the score you told meyesterday. This is what you need to work on, [for example] if it was integers or something.”Teachers firmly believe that their students like using the program. When formally interviewed,teachers were overwhelmingly positive about their students’ interactions with the program. Ofthe 179 recorded comments, 79% were positive in nature. Teachers felt that the programultimately makes math more attractive to their students than it has been in the past.3rd grade teacher: “My kids enjoyed it. There was not a day or a moment where they would say,“Oh why do we have to be here?” They look forward to going.”3rd grade teacher: “My kids were really excited to show me their scores at the end of the day.Just that competition with themselves to do better.”3rd grade teacher: “And the speed games. I hear a lot of good feedback about the speed games.”5th grade teacher: “My kids really like it; they really look forward to it.”7th grade teacher: “The 7th graders, they’d rather do math on the computer than in theclassroom”Teachers firmly believe that their students like using SuccessMaker Math andfeel that the program makes the learning process more fun for students.Although most teachers felt that the characters and animation were appropriate, a few found thecharacters too immature and the animation distracting. Whereas third 3 rd teachersoverwhelmingly found the animation and graphics a welcome component to the program,negative response to the graphics and animation were most prevalent with the 5 th and 7 th gradeteachers.3rd grade teacher: “The animation hooked them in.”5th grade teacher: “They think it’s silly. One girl complained about the dog licking the screen.They just want to move on.”- 56 -