Excellent practice opportunities for targeting specific math skills.
Community Review for IXL
My Take
IXL is a well organized website that provides practice exercises for math skills. IXL is easy to search and navigate. Educators, students, and parents can easily access material based on grade level, state standards, or the Common Core standards. The well organized nature of the website makes it quick and easy to get started.
I found the site more appropriate for my younger than Khan Academy, but provides similar practice activities. IXL seemed to offer grade level content whereas Khan sometimes includes problems that are too advanced for my students (ie, negative numbers, exponents, etc).
A major downside to IXL is the lack of math instruction or hints to support student learning. It is a practice platform, not a learning one. Khan shines in this area but IXL falls short. IXL is fairly text heavy and doesn't have an interesting interface or motivational badges, etc. This could get monotonous quickly for students. To use all the reporting features, you'll need to pay.
How I Use It
IXL is great for quickly reviewing and maintaining topics with kids. They can quickly show their level of mastery on specific topics and keep their skills fresh.
Parents can also use IXL to support their children in math. It can be the basis for homework since the data can be carefully tracked.