Birmingham City Schools (BCS) is spearheading an innovative research initiative to explore the critical link between student motivation and math performance. In partnership with sub-awardees WestEd and MIND Education, creators of ST Math, BCS is driving the development of real- time, data-driven insights to improve student engagement and learning outcomes. This three-year initiative is supported by a grant from the Gates Foundation.
Through this remarkable three-way partnership, BCS is taking a proactive leadership role in co-designing and co-researching new ways to measure and enhance student motivation. By adopting ST Math’s visual, game-based learning approach, the district has the vehicle to apply cutting-edge research methodologies to understand and improve student persistence in learning. This initiative is part of the Gates Foundation’s R&D Infrastructure (RDI) strategy, which seeks to make K-12 research benefit all three co-researcher roles alike, building research capacity at districts while pursuing program improvements by developers and publishing rigorous findings to benefit the education field overall.
A Research-Forward Approach to Student Success
BCS has long been committed to evidence-based strategies, a core pillar of its strategic plan, and to fostering academic achievement through innovative approaches. By pursuing and winning this research grant, the district is not only ensuring that students receive ST Math’s engaging visual math instruction but is also leading the charge in shaping the future of how student motivation is measured and supported in K-12 education.
“At Birmingham City Schools, we recognize that learning doesn’t just happen when students are given access to strong curriculum—it also requires students to be engaged and motivated,” said Dr. Mark Sullivan, Superintendent of Birmingham City Schools. “This partnership aligns perfectly with our district’s strategic focus on academic achievement and evidence-based strategies. By working alongside WestEd and MIND Education, we are ensuring that our students not only have access to best-in-market digital tools but that we deeply learn how to enhance the motivation that drives their success. This project also contributes to the broader goal of improving use of any high-quality math instructional material for all students.”
ST Math: A Unique Platform for Measuring Motivation
Unlike traditional math programs, ST Math, developed by MIND Education provides a game-based, mastery-driven learning environment where students must struggle to solve visual puzzles rather than only memorizing procedures. The digital platform generates rich student engagement data—offering unprecedented insight into how student persistence, effort, and challenge-seeking behaviors correlate with math performance.
“ST Math has always excelled at motivating students to persist through challenging puzzles, and this project takes that a step further by transforming motivation into a dynamic, measurable KPI [key performance indicator],” said Andrew Coulson, Chief Data Scientist at MIND Research Institute, the research arm of MIND Education. “For the first time, researchers will use ST Math’s gameplay data to create a real-time quantitative metric for motivation, identifying where and when students disengage. This ‘right-now’ student metric will empower educators to proactively support students before motivation wanes, ensuring productive learning time.”
A Model for Future Educational Research
This project goes beyond traditional district-vendor relationships. BCS, WestEd, and MIND Education are co-designing the research, ensuring that the insights generated are directly relevant and actionable for teachers and school leaders.
“Involving the partnering district in every step of the research, from developing questions to how the findings get reported, is critical if the research is to useful and meaningful to the district, and its school leaders and teachers” said John Rice, Senior Research Director of Research Practice Partnerships at WestEd. “This model for conducting research considers everyone at the table (the district staff, the product developers, the research team), as bringing their own areas of expertise to the conversation while we all work towards the same goal – to improve student math achievement in BCS. And, what we learn from throughout the three-year project will be disseminated to educators outside of BCS as well.”
Addressing the Urgent Need for Effective Digital Learning
With millions nationwide using digital learning programs, ensuring that these tools are used effectively by all students is more critical than ever. Even well-proven benefits are often lost when students simply fail to engage at the necessary levels.
By leading this research, Birmingham City Schools is tackling a core challenge in digital education—ensuring that students not only have access to the best tools but are actively motivated to use them in ways that drive success. The project’s findings will inform future instructional strategies, instructional designs, and help scale the productive use of evidence- based digital learning that can benefit students in Birmingham and beyond.
The findings from this study will provide new models for measuring motivation, inform edtech implementation training for teachers, and shape future design improvements in digital learning programs nationwide.