I CAN Learn® Results in Mississippi

I CAN Learn® (ICL) educational system is a comprehensive math curriculum delivered through interactive, multimedia software. It is now being used in 22 states and 523 classrooms. In most districts, I CAN Learn® classrooms provide instruction to those students who have traditionally been underserved. Often used in Title I schools and classrooms, I CAN Learn® typically serves poor and minority children in large urban or isolated rural school districts.

To date The I CAN Learn® system has been installed in 35 Mississippi Schools. The first implementation was in 18 lower-performing Mississippi high school at the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year. In 4 of these 18 schools the program was implemented on a part-time basis or with only some of the students. In the other 14 schools, it was used with all Algebra I students throughout the school year. In March 2004 another 17 schools implemented the I CAN Learn® program, but the program could only be used for the last three months of the school year. For the rest of Mississippi there were 235 high schools without the I CAN Learn® program, and the results of these 235 schools are used as a basis of comparison.

Student performance as measured by the percent of students passing the Mississippi Algebra I Subject Area Test was compared for the 2003 and 2004 school years (i.e., before and after implementation of the I CAN Learn® system). As shown in Figure 1, the more access students had to the I CAN Learn® system, the greater the school's improvement in percent of students passing Algebra I. As in 21 other states, the I CAN Learn® solution is opening access to higher-level math courses in Mississippi by allowing students to pass the Algebra I gateway.