How Prodigy helped more
Texas students succeed
www.prodigygame.com
May 10 2018
How Prodigy helped more
Texas students succeed
The challenge
Like educators in schools across the United States, math teachers
in the Texas school system are under pressure to help students
achieve positive scores on statewide assessments. While every school
wants to accelerate student math proficiency, administrators at
five Texas school districts faced unique obstacles. And although
each school had a different story, those administrators shared many
key questions when considering tools to reinforce their math
curricula. What solution could legitimately:
• Boost learning outcomes for students of all economic
backgrounds from 1st to 8th Grade?
Improving results together! • Succeed on a limited budget, with financial constraints
restricting most options?
Prodigy Game and five Texas
school districts increased pass • Engage students, with disengagement being the number one
complaint from teachers?
rates, lowered fail rates, and
accelerated math proficiency. • Meet the needs of a diverse student population with a wide
range of proficiency levels?
The solution
The districts’ students now use Prodigy — a free, adaptive math
game loved by millions of students around the world. Fully
aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)
curriculum, teachers assign in-game content to help students build
prerequisite skills and address problem areas. Because it runs
quickly and easily on all internet browsers and devices, teachers
are able to get started in less than five minutes.
How it works
To boost math results, teachers use Prodigy to:
• Pinpoint students’ problem areas and use adaptive learning to
“
customize content and reinforce instruction
• Engage entire classrooms and incorporate the math curriculum
Prodigy helped engage kids and within a fun video game environment that appeals to students
increase scores because it gave • Adjust questions to support in-class lessons and to review
them confidence. material on a student-by-student basis
• Obtain live data and reports on questions answered, play time
Brenda Lynch in and out of class, and in-game plans and assignments
Math Instructional Specialist, New Caney ISD
Across the five Texas school districts in question,1 we observed test
results in 171 schools — comparing those that used Prodigy with
those that did not.2
“
Our kids are so engaged with
Prodigy. They love it. They
The results
• Schools enrolled in Prodigy both performed better and
enjoyed greater improvements on STAAR test results than
really want to participate and inactive schools.
really want to learn more. To • Schools enrolled in Prodigy saw an average increase
me, as a math coordinator, of 12.39 points on scores in the STAAR exams — double
that speaks volumes. the improvement seen in schools where no students
used the game.
Kristi Richter
• In schools enrolled in Prodigy, the percentage of students who
Math Coordinator, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD
reached the Approaches benchmark was roughly 75% greater
than the improvement seen in inactive schools.
• In schools enrolled in Prodigy, the percentage of students who
reached the Masters benchmark was roughly 40% greater than
the improvement seen in inactive school.
Note: This case study shares some observations where playing Prodigy seemed to
correlate with students’ math performance. While not a randomized trial, these
observations may suggest some patterns of interest.
Average change in STAAR scores (2016 vs 2017)
15
10 12.39 An average improvement of 12.39 points
on scores in the STAAR exams — double
5 6.19
the improvement seen in schools that
0 did not use Prodigy.
Without Prodigy Using Prodigy
Average change in % of students reaching “Approaches” (2016 vs 2017)
3
A 2.67% improvement in the
2 2.67 percentage of students who reached
the Approaches benchmark — about
Bring Prodigy to your district! 1 1.21 75% better than the 1.21% seen in
Join 800,000 teachers and 0 inactive schools.
Without Prodigy Using Prodigy
30 million students who love the
most engaging math platform
in the world. Average change in % of students reaching “Masters” (2016 vs 2017)
4 A 4.11% improvement in the percentage
4.11
of students who reached the Masters
2 2.76
benchmark — about 40% better than
the 2.76% seen in inactive schools.
0
Without Prodigy Using Prodigy
1. The school districts analyzed are: Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Beaumont ISD, Tomball ISD, Grand Prairie ISD
and Midland ISD.
2. To compare changes in these 171 schools’ test scores, we contrasted the results of the 51 schools that did
not use Prodigy with those of the 119 schools where at least 20% of the student population used Prodigy.
