Solving District Challenges with Pear Deck Learning

How can districts use AI to enhance instruction, support teachers, and improve student outcomes?

District leaders are facing mounting pressure to prove ROI on every edtech purchase. The challenge comes from too many disconnected tools, too much student data without action, uneven engagement, and persistent equity gaps.

While AI is often marketed as a tool for efficiency, its real value for districts comes when it enables stronger systems. The impact allows schools to turn classroom data into instructional decisions, creating consistency across schools and ensuring every student is being supported.

To illustrate how that’s happening today, we turned to the education experts featured in our customer stories. From Kentucky to Ohio to Louisiana, educators and leaders are demonstrating what becomes possible when AI is integrated into a unified platform designed for teaching and learning.

How districts reduce tool sprawl with a unified platform

Disconnected platforms drive up costs and scatter attention. At Woodford County Public Schools, CIO Dr. Josh Rayburn faced exactly that challenge. His solution was to consolidate under one platform.

“Finding a partner that can provide us with multiple services and provide them under one umbrella is very important to me,” he said. With Pear Deck Learning, his district combined planning, practice, and assessment into one system that teachers actually want to use.

Digital learning coach Erica Snow recalled the challenge when she joined Woodford. “When I came in, I asked teachers what they were using because we didn’t have a clear way to track tools. Even administrators couldn’t tell me everything, and that made it hard to know where we were spending money and whether it was making a difference for students.”

Christina Verberne, an Instructional Technology Facilitator in Louisiana, added that adoption depends on lowering barriers. “We have a lot of teachers who, unless we give them the tools already built in, just don’t have the time.”

High school science teacher Justin Jackson in Kentucky echoed the same challenge from the classroom perspective. Before Pear Deck Learning, he relied on a patchwork of apps for video, slides, assessments, and practice. Now, he’s streamlining his entire workflow into one place. “What used to take five or six tabs, some copy-pasting, and a lot of back and forth, I can now do within a single platform, without leaving the workflow.”

How Pear Deck Learning reduces tool sprawl in districts:

• Provides one unified platform for planning, presenting, practicing, and assessing
  
  
• Reduces tool fatigue for teachers and contract sprawl for administrators
  
  
• Ensures security, consistency, and adoption across classrooms

How schools make classroom data actionable with AI

Data overload is one of the biggest frustrations leaders face. Reports pile up, but they rarely help teachers adjust instruction when it matters most. Many educators say they don’t have the information they need to fully support student needs, and too often, the process of interpreting data is manual, with teachers still turning to spreadsheets or disconnected dashboards to track learning progress.

Ohio science teacher Mike Van Kerkhove put it simply: “Even in real time, I can see if a question isn’t going well and stop to address it. If I see a lot of red on question four, I know we need to talk about it right away.” 

For Justin Jackson, whose classroom runs on a mastery-based model, that same need for real-time insight became the reason he joined Pear Deck Learning’s Innovation Incubator. “You have to be able to meet students at their level of accessibility,” Justin says. “That’s a logistical issue if you don’t have tools that can help facilitate it.” 

Without one platform, trying to differentiate across multiple tools often felt like an uphill battle. Now, with everything in one place, he can design lessons at varying levels of complexity, embed scaffolded support, and assign follow-up activities, all without reinventing the wheel or switching tools.

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With Instant Insights built into the platform, Justin can also see in real time where students are thriving or struggling. Instead of waiting for data to trickle in, he can respond immediately with targeted support, keeping every student engaged and moving forward. “These tools are so useful because they involve everybody in the conversation.”

At the district level, responsiveness is just as critical. “Data informs everything we do,” explained Dr. Rayburn. “From the district level down to the individual student, it guides the next step.”

How Pear Deck Learning supports actionable data with AI:

• Instant Insights in Pear Deck and Pear Practice surfaces student understanding during class
  
  
• Automatic grouping based on misconceptions enables targeted reteaching
  
  
• Data-informed instruction in Pear Assessment’s Live Classboard connects assessments to ready-to-use follow-ups
  
  
• Closes the gap between “what the data says” and “what to do next”

"The thing I love most about Pear Deck Learning is how it's the most comprehensive. There's pretty much a tool for anything I'd need, so instead of having to go to five different places, you can just go to one." — Stephanie Tinberg, High School Teacher

How districts improve student engagement and accountability

Student focus is another challenge districts continually name. Devices open doors to learning, but also to distraction. For Dr. Cecelia Gillam, an AP Environmental Science and Honors Biology teacher in Louisiana, combining Pear Deck Learning with GoGuardian Teacher has been key to maintaining engagement.

“I’ll also use it to push a kid into the spot I want them to be on,” she said. “With this, it’s really one website, just with three different parts. I think it makes things a lot easier for them.”

She also explained how interactive lessons change the classroom dynamic. “I love the drawing slides. I enjoy watching them do that in Pear Practice because it gets the conversations going.”

For Woodford County, the difference showed up in student energy. Erica Snow recalled visiting a math class where Pear Practice had just been introduced. “The teacher told me, ‘My students are eating this up, it’s amazing.’ When I walked in, I saw teamwork, individual practice, and fun elements like avatars. It was the most engagement I’ve seen in a math class in a long time.”

How Pear Deck Learning supports:

• Builds interactive lessons that make participation part of the routine
  
  
• Pairs with GoGuardian Teacher to provide structure and guardrails
  
  
• Supports engagement as a system-level metric tied to participation and attendance

How schools are supporting accessibility and attendance gaps 

Accessibility and attendance are two of the biggest challenges districts face when it comes to assessments. Students with IEPs or reading challenges often struggle to show what they know on traditional tests, while absences can create gaps that are hard to close.

 Mike Van Kerkhove noted for using Pear Assessment to support accommodations, “My intervention specialist loves that it’s not just a reading test. I try to make assessments more about applying content.”

Mike also pointed to how the platform supports attendance gaps. “Absent students can access the work from anywhere. If I’m absent, I can post to Schoology, and students know exactly where to go. That sends them to the Pear Assessment, they complete it, and it goes right into the gradebook.”

For Mike, this is also shifting how he is teaching. “(Pear Assessment) helps with a bunch of things. I’m less of a presenter and more of a facilitator.”

With the launch of real-time translation and read-aloud features in Pear Deck, accessibility extends even further across the platform. These tools support English Language Learners (ELLs) during live instruction, giving them direct, in-the-moment accessibility support without leaving the interactive lesson.

First-grade teacher Madison Weidner from New York Public Schools shared, “Pear Deck’s audio recording tool creates translated summaries of my lessons so my ELLs feel engaged and included. With translation and read-aloud features built right in, I no longer have to spend extra time translating materials. My students can now follow along more easily, understand what’s happening in real time, and participate confidently with their peers while hearing lessons in both English and their home language.”

How Pear Deck Learning supports equity and differentiation: 

• Provides differentiated practice and scaffolds to support diverse learners
• Offers built-in translation and read-aloud features to support English Language Learners during live instruction
• Ensures absent or out-of-class students can still access materials seamlessly
  
  
• Reduces inequities by embedding accessibility features directly in the instructional flow

How educators and leaders see the value of Pear Deck Learning

Across classrooms and district offices, one message is consistent: Pear Deck Learning solves the challenges that make teaching and learning harder. District leaders see the value of consolidating tools into one secure platform. Teachers point to assessments that are more accessible and keep students connected, even when they miss class. Instructional coaches highlight how adoption grows when friction is removed. And in classrooms, AI features like Instant Insights give educators the power to differentiate and respond in the moment, keeping every student engaged.

Together, these perspectives show that Pear Deck Learning is not another siloed product, but a connected system built to address the challenges districts care most about.

See how Pear Deck Learning can help your district address your biggest challenges.

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