Exploring Issues of Implementation, Equity, and Student Achievement With Educational Software in the DC Public Schools

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher

Analyses from a researcher-practitioner partnership in the District of Columbia Public Schools examine how educational software affects students’ academic achievement. Using a combined dataset that links district student information with First in Math (FIM) usage, the study investigates implementation and equity issues. Time spent in FIM correlates with improved future standardized math performance for Grades 4–8, while usage is strongly associated with race, gender, and prior achievement. Findings support equitable deployment of new technologies to maximize learner benefits.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Research approach and data sources

Key findings on achievement

Equity-related differences in usage

Implications for districts and researchers

AERA Open October-December 2016, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 1–10 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858416667726 © The Author(s) 2016. [http://ero.sagepub.com](http://ero.sagepub.com) Exploring Issues of Implementation, Equity, and Student Achievement With Educational Software in the DC Public Schools June Ahn New York University Austin Beck University of Maryland, College Park John Rice Michelle Foster District of Columbia Public Schools In this article, we present analyses from a researcher-practitioner partnership in the District of Columbia Public Schools, where we are exploring the impact of educational software on students’academic achievement. We analyze a unique data set that combines student-level information from the district with data of student usage of a mathematics game platform: First in Math (FIM). These data offer a window into long-standing issues in the educational technology literature around implementation, equity, and student achievement. We show that time spent in FIM was correlated with improved future performance on standardized math assessments for students in Grades 4–8. However, student time spent using FIM was highly related to factors such as race, gender, and prior achievement. Such observations from data are helpful for school districts and researchers to inform equitable implementation of new technologies and maximize benefits to learners. Keywords: computers and learning, equity, mathematics education, regression analyses, technology Recent studies have documented the rich ways that computers, software, games, online curriculum, and other new technologies affect how people access education, learn from one another, and develop new skills (Clark, Tanner-Smith, & Killingsworth, 2015; Ito et al., 2013; Means, Bakia, & Murphy, 2014) . However, researchers, policy makers, and educators consistently face a seemingly intractable conundrum. Despite our hopes that new technologies will revolutionize education systems, with promising findings in controlled studies, we often find little positive impact on students’ formal learning outcomes when technologies are implemented more broadly in schools or communities (Cuban, 1986; Vigdor & Ladd, 2010; Warschauer, Cotten, & Ames, 2011) . This history looms large, as K–12 schools in the United States experience a new wave of optimism that technology can be deployed to enhance classroom practice and improve student achievement. The prior literature in educational technology highlights the complicated relationship between technology and learning outcomes. A technological tool alone does not cause learning to occur (Clark, 1994) . Instead, learning outcomes arise out of a complicated web of sociotechnical factors, including ensuring consistent access to hardware and software (Wood & Howley, 2012), attending to how teachers conceive of and implement technology (Cuban, Kirkpatrick,& Peck, 2001; Zhao & Frank, 2003), and understanding whether and how learners use the technology (Means et al., 2014) . In studies of any given technology—ranging from computers and video games to online curriculum and wikis—scholars have also shown that social factors such as class, race, gender, and school environment are highly related to whether students have access to a new technology, engage with it, and use it in ways related to improved learning outcomes (Hohlfeld, Ritzhaupt, Barron, & Kemker, 2008; Reich, Murnane, & Willett, 2012; Shin, Sutherland, Norris, & Soloway, 2012) . Issues of implementation and equity remain vital factors today, as K–12 school districts reinvest heavily in computer hardware and digital curriculum. In this article, we present initial analyses of an urban school district’s implementation of an online mathematics game called First in Math (FIM) . We situate our work in two recent developments in education research. First, we are part of a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) where scholars and practitioners (a) jointly develop research questions and

FAQs

What educational software and setting does the study focus on?

The study examines the impact of an online mathematics game, First in Math (FIM), implemented in the District of Columbia Public Schools.

How does the analysis measure student learning outcomes?

It links student-level district information with FIM usage data and evaluates correlations with future performance on standardized math assessments in Grades 4–8.

Which student factors are associated with how much students use FIM?

Student time spent using FIM is highly related to race, gender, and prior achievement.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher