Age of Learning regularly commissions research by independent early education experts to evaluate the effectiveness of ABCmouse.com. The summary below highlights key findings from three large-scale studies of the effects of ABCmouse.com usage by children in school and at home, in a range of geographic and socio-economic settings.
About ABCmouse.com
Designed for children ages 2 to 6+ in collaboration with nationally recognized early learning experts, ABCmouse.com offers a comprehensive, supplementary curriculum that includes many thousands of learning activities spanning the subject areas of language, reading, mathematics, science, social studies, and health, with art and music. Activities include books, animated instructional presentations, games, puzzles, songs, music videos, and art activities, along with many rich site features, such as the Classroom, Zoo, Farm, and Basics area, that help develop vocabulary, foundational skills in language arts and mathematics, and general knowledge.
ABCmouse.com is available on computers, tablets, and smartphones as a low-cost subscription for families, and is provided at no cost to educators and various community programs through Age of Learning’s unique Education Access Initiatives. More than 45,000 educators actively use ABCmouse.com in their classrooms.
South Florida
A study of ABCmouse.com in South Florida included more than 320 students in 11 different schools. During the first phase of the study, the treatment group had full access to ABCmouse.com and the control group did not.
All children were assessed on foundational literacy and math skills during the study, using the same assessment instrument. Among the key findings: In the study’s first 8 weeks, children using ABCmouse.com significantly accelerated their learning of key literacy and math skills. It took children in the control group, who were not using ABCmouse.com, an average of 16 to 24 weeks to make the same progress.
San Antonio, Texas
In San Antonio, Texas, a nationally recognized education research organization designed and implemented a study of ABCmouse.com. This study included more than 1,900 participating children, evenly distributed among control and treatment groups. These children represented multiple school districts and were assessed with a variety of standard assessments.
Researchers found that children using ABCmouse.com made significant gains compared to children in the control group on a range of key early reading and math skills, including phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, letter knowledge, counting sets, numeral knowledge, shape discrimination, and arithmetic operations.
Nationwide
A third independent study commissioned by Age of Learning involved more than 4,500 ABCmouse.com subscribers using the curriculum at home. This study compared knowledge and skills of children who had completed a number of ABCmouse.com learning activities in varying periods of time with children of the same age who had just subscribed to ABCmouse.com but had not yet begun using the curriculum. In this study, children were measured on a range of academic skills through a guided online assessment developed by independent assessment experts.
Following the assessments, researchers found that children who used ABCmouse.com scored significantly higher on several key academic skills than peers who had not used the curriculum. On a number of these skills, including letter identification, phonemic awareness, sight word recognition, number identification, and counting, children with regular usage scored more than 50% higher than peers in the comparison group who had just subscribed.
Summary of Study Findings
These studies found that:
- ABCmouse.com accelerates learning, with children developing early literacy and math skills significantly faster as a result of using the curriculum.
- ABCmouse.com helps children make significant gains in phonics, vocabulary, literacy, and other reading skills, as well as numeracy and other key math skills.
- Children who regularly use ABCmouse.com at home score more than 50% higher on several reading and math skills—on some skills, more than 80% higher—than peers who have not yet used the curriculum.
We will be highlighting more results from research on ABCmouse.com in the months ahead.