Signs of excellent teaching in Maryland's classrooms
Almost every district is cutting edtech tools this year. Budgets are tighter, and the sprawl has gotten hard to ignore: one widely cited industry report released this year found that districts maintain access to roughly 3,000 digital tools on average, while day-to-day classroom usage clusters around a small handful. The gap between what's purchased and what's used is where a lot of edtech budgets quietly leak, which is why consolidation has climbed toward the top of the priority list for district leaders.
But the number of tools you cut is the easy half of the decision. The harder half is what you're left with. Consolidate down to the wrong platform and you've saved money while quietly making classrooms worse. The goal isn't fewer tools for their own sake. It's keeping the ones that genuinely change what happens between a teacher and a student.
So what does a keeper look like? To answer that, we looked at 50 teachers across Maryland whose students logged more activity on Wayground than nearly anyone else in the state in May 2026, and asked them a direct question: what does excellent teaching mean to you? Their answers are a practical guide to the signs of excellent teaching, and to what a tool worth keeping really does.
What makes an edtech tool worth keeping?
The clearest test isn't a feature list. It's whether students keep showing up. A tool worth keeping produces sustained engagement you can see in the data, students who keep logging in and doing the work, because the classroom is built for them specifically, not for an average student who doesn't exist.
That's exactly what showed up in Maryland. These teachers weren't selected for their philosophies. They were selected because their students logged more activity on Wayground in May 2026 than nearly anyone else in Maryland. Their classrooms are working, and what they believe about teaching explains why. Read together, their answers describe three things worth insisting on before a district decides which platform survives the budget.
It meets students at their real level, not the pacing guide's
Excellent teaching begins with an honest assessment of where each student is, not where the pacing guide says they're expected to be. A tool worth keeping is built around that reality.
Matt W. at Archbishop Curley High School in the Archdiocese of Baltimore frames this as both a principle and a design observation:
“Excellent teaching starts with meeting students where they are. Wayground is specifically designed to meet students at their current level of knowledge and help them grow in confidence through the various games and activities.”
“Specifically designed” is significant. He's describing a design philosophy that matches his own. Wayground's Mastery Peak mode operationalizes it: the platform adapts to what each student demonstrates and adjusts as they progress, which is the structural equivalent of what an expert tutor does in real time. A district that keeps a tool built on that premise is keeping leverage, not just a subscription.
It makes frequent formative assessment realistic
Students learn more when they get feedback quickly, when misconceptions get corrected before they harden. A keeper makes frequent, low-stakes assessment practical instead of a burden.
Lori J. teaches English at Harford Technical High School in Harford County Public Schools:
“Excellent teaching means assessing where students are frequently and giving them the supports and the reteaching they need to excel. Wayground lets me know exactly what students know and don't know so I can address those misconceptions right away.”
“Right away” is the critical phrase. The gap between a misconception forming and a teacher catching it is one of the most important variables in learning, and the longer that gap, the more it compounds. Real-time dashboards let Lori J. respond during the session rather than the next day, the kind of instructional agility that's nearly impossible to maintain without the right tools in place.
It makes students partners in their own learning
Great teaching creates the conditions for more students to drive themselves. A tool worth keeping helps students understand why they're doing what they're doing, not just what to click.
Bonnie B. at Georgetown Preparatory School in Montgomery County has built a classroom practice around exactly this:
“Excellent teaching means explaining and pacing my lessons using methods that are appropriate for my students. Excellent teaching means asking the right questions and using the right assignments and assessments to understand what students know and don't know. Students know the purpose of these practices: repetition, finding misconceptions, and reaching mastery. Students also enjoy the peer competition these practices provide. I often hear exciting reports from students when they get all the practice questions right the first time and ace the quizzes or tests the following days. Wayground encourages my students to self-assess, review and ask questions, and ultimately learn effectively and have some fun during their learning process.”
What's striking is the transparency of the practice. Her students know why they're doing what they're doing: repetition finds gaps, finding gaps leads to mastery, and mastery is the point. That awareness is itself a product of strong teaching, and it's the kind of culture a district can recognize and support rather than manufacture from scratch.
It covers enough ground to replace several narrower tools
The signs above are about quality. This one is about breadth, and it's where consolidation and impact meet. A platform can do one thing brilliantly and still leave a district paying for four others to fill the gaps. The tools most worth keeping are the ones that do more than one job well.
The same Wayground account that runs the assessments and adaptive practice these teachers rely on also covers lessons and presentations, reading passages, interactive video, and flashcard-style review. A district doesn't have to buy those capabilities as five separate subscriptions from five separate vendors. Whether any one teacher uses all five today or grows into them over time, the point for a budget owner is that the coverage is already there, under one contract, ready when a classroom needs it.
Set that against a stack of narrower tools a district is renewing one by one, and the arithmetic gets simple. Consolidating toward a platform that meets the other tests, real reach and real-time feedback, and also covers the ground of several separate tools, is how a district cuts cost without cutting into what teachers and students depend on.
Bringing the budget and the classroom into one conversation
The three signs above came from teachers across public and private systems who arrived at a shared understanding: excellent teaching isn't primarily about delivery, it's about knowing, and acting on what you know, continuously. None of that shows up in engagement numbers by accident.
That's what makes this more than a budget exercise. When the platform a district keeps is also the one driving the engagement its best teachers are already producing, the cost conversation and the teaching-quality conversation stop being two separate meetings. Knowing which of your own teachers are doing this work, and making sure the tools they rely on survive the next round of cuts, protects both the budget and the classroom at once.
Want to see which tools and teachers in your district are already driving that kind of impact? We can pull a report showing your most active Wayground educators and how they're using the platform, so you can find the same signs of excellent teaching in your own schools before you decide what to keep. Reach out to get started.
Teachers featured here were among the top 50 most active Wayground users in Maryland based on student activity in May 2026. All responses shared with permission.
