Mission.io now meets ESSA Level II standards, one of the highest levels of evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act, as validated by Instructure.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, July 21, 2026. Instructure's third-party research team designed and conducted a rigorous quasi-experimental study to evaluate Mission.io's impact on student learning. The study found significant, favorable gains for the fifth graders who used Mission.io, confirming measurable improvements in what students knew, how well they wrote, and how engaged they were in their learning.
This validation places Mission.io among a select group of educational technology programs recognized under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for meeting strict, evidence-based research standards and delivering results in real classrooms. Instructure issued its formal validation on June 19, 2026, after three trained reviewers, including a What Works Clearinghouse-certified reviewer, applied Instructure's ESSA Validation Rubric and found that the study met all 10 of 10 indicators for Level II "Moderate Evidence."
The study, conducted during the 2025–26 school year, evaluated 1,039 fifth-grade students across 53 classrooms in a large public school district. Students who used Mission.io were compared with students who did not, while researchers accounted for pre-existing differences between the two groups and met What Works Clearinghouse baseline equivalence standards for a well-matched comparison. The study was funded through the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences as part of a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.
Students who used Mission.io scored significantly higher than their peers who did not use the program across three outcomes:
The researchers also found Mission.io to be highly cost-effective, rating its content knowledge and writing outcomes as "Highest Value” and behavior engagement as “High Value.”
ESSA Level II validation gives districts the assurance that Mission.io's effectiveness has been independently evaluated against federally recognized research standards. For district and academic leaders, it means confidence in a platform that demonstrated measurable gains in learning, not just a strong theoretical rationale.
The validation builds on Mission.io's existing ESSA Level IV "Demonstrates Rationale" standing, also validated by Instructure in 2024. Moving from Level IV to Level II means Mission.io is now backed by direct, comparison-group evidence of impact on real students in real classrooms. A randomized controlled trial, the requirement for ESSA's highest tier, is currently underway.
Mission.io goes beyond traditional digital practice. The platform turns the classroom into an immersive team Mission, where students apply academic skills to solve problems together while teachers facilitate collaboration, problem-solving, and discussion. The new evidence indicates that this approach does more than capture student interest; it moves the outcomes that matter to schools.
"This is the kind of evidence that really matters to the educators and schools we serve," said Cameron Milien, Director of Academics at Mission.io. "An independent research team studied more than a thousand students and found that the students using Mission.io grew in their content knowledge, writing, and engagement significantly more than the students who didn't use the program. Meeting this ESSA Level II bar tells districts they can adopt Mission.io with confidence that it is grounded in real results, not just good intentions."
Curious to learn more about the study? Read the full report and view our ESSA Level II validation at mission.io/evidence.
Mission.io is a K–8 learning platform that transforms classrooms into collaborative, story-driven Missions where students apply academic skills to solve problems as a team. More than one million students have experienced Mission.io, and its library includes 100+ standards-aligned Missions for Grades K–8. Mission.io's research and development has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. Learn more at mission.io.
Bautista, J., Henschel, M., & Allen Green, E. (2026). Mission.io and fifth grade learning outcomes: An ESSA Level II efficacy study, 2025–26. Instructure.
The R&D described here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program contract #91990024C0023 to INFINID LEARNING INC (DBA Mission.io). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.