Schoolwork vs Number Rack, by MLC
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Schoolwork
This app helps educators manage assignments, assessments, and class announcements, streamlining communication and tracking student progress. It allows for personalized instruction by providing insights into individual student performance and areas needing support or challenge.
- Create and send assessments
- Assign homework and study reminders
- Track student progress and performance
- Collaborate with students
- Provide real-time feedback
- Assign specific app activities
- Personalize instruction
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Schoolwork is an iPad app that helps teachers save time, identify trends, and maximize each student’s potential. Using Schoolwork, teachers can create and send assessments, assignments, class announcements, or study reminders. With Schoolwork, teachers can send any document or file as a classroom assessment. They can review and score student work, and analyze student performance per item. For assignments, teachers can easily share materials, send students to a specific activity in an app, collaborate with students, and view student progress. Teachers can see analytics, insights, and progress information on how students performed, making it easier to individualize instruction based on student needs. Students get one central place to see assessments, assignments, announcements, submit work, and view their own progress. Keep students focused and organized • Students have one place to go to see their assessments, assignments, and announcements • Students can see what is due this week, across all their classes • In Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, and other supported apps, students can submit homework right from within the app Collaborate and give real-time feedback • Easily collaborate with individual students or with the entire class in just a few taps • Add comments to students’ work while they’re working on an assignment, or after completing an assessment • Easily review and score assessments with or without points • Use Apple Pencil or your finger to mark up documents, assessments, PDFs, photos, and more Assign specific activities within an app • With apps optimized for Schoolwork, you can review an app’s list of assignable activities, then easily send one or more to a class or student • With a single tap, students are brought directly to the assigned activity within the app • For activities you assign in Schoolwork, you’ll be able to view student progress, including quiz scores, points earned, and time spent Personalize instruction • See a holistic view of a student’s progress, including submitted work and progress in apps, all in one place • Use student progress to find students who might need an extra challenge, or extra support • On assessments, use item-level data to identify trends and inform instructional next steps Get started easily • Your existing classes in Apple School Manager automatically show in Schoolwork • Easily create new classes yourself right from within Schoolwork Privacy In order for teachers to view student progress or activities they assign in Schoolwork, schools are required to enable the Student Progress feature in Apple School Manager. Student progress is only reported for teacher-assigned activities that students complete while using a school-provided Managed Apple Account. All student progress data is encrypted in transit and at rest. If a school does not opt in, teachers and students can still use Schoolwork without this feature. In order to provide and improve Schoolwork, Apple collects non-personally identifiable data about how users interact with the app.
Number Rack, by MLC
This virtual manipulative tool helps children develop number sense through interactive bead groupings. It supports exploration of addition and subtraction strategies with customizable rows and colors. Ideal for elementary classrooms, it includes annotation and sharing features.
- 1-10 rows of 10 beads
- Resizable bead covers for subtraction
- Color-coded bead rows
- Annotation and drawing tools
- Math text and writing tools
- Shareable work via image or code
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Number Rack facilitates the natural development of children’s number sense. The movable, colored beads encourage learners to think in groups of fives and tens, helping them to explore and discover a variety of addition and subtraction strategies. This virtual version of the manipulative is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments. FEATURES • Display 1 to 10 rows of beads, 10 beads per row. • Hide beads with resizable covers, which allows teachers or learners to model subtraction or difference problems. • Reverse the colors of rows 6 to 10 to distinguish (or not) groupings of 25 beads. • Use the drawing tools to annotate work and show understanding. • Add equations, expressions, and descriptions with the math text and writing tools. • Share work by saving an image or providing a share code to others. Great for creating the initial setup of an activity, then sharing it with students so they can explore it further.
Verdict
Schoolwork and Number Rack, by MLC both sit at 3.3 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Number Rack, by MLC's written reviews are positive against 18% of Schoolwork's. Number Rack, by MLC also leads on iOS requirement (14.7 vs 18.2). Schoolwork's advantage is update cadence (every 3 months vs every 25 months) and ratings volume (70 vs 9). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 3.3 for Schoolwork against 3.2 for Number Rack, by MLC. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Schoolwork has 70 ratings behind it against 9, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 18% of Schoolwork's written reviews are positive against 100% of Number Rack, by MLC's.
Schoolwork ships an update every 3 months, Number Rack, by MLC every 25 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Schoolwork | Number Rack, by MLC |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (70 ratings) — better | 3.2 (9 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 17.6% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 70 — better | 9 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months — better | Every 25 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPad | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.2 | 14.7 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 167 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Apple | The Math Learning Center |
Customer experience
Schoolwork
Number Rack, by MLC
Bugs and requests
Schoolwork
Reported bugs
47 issues- App crashes frequently
- Files get hung up and do not share correctly
- Student work is often lost or delayed
- Cannot upload PDFs to existing tasks
- New features like collaboration do not work
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- Constant crashes
- Cannot sign in
- iCloud synchronization issues
- Documents (PDFs) cannot be uploaded
- App freezes regularly
- Cannot get school account
- App is very hard to use
- App freezes
- App crashes constantly
- Cannot upload work
- iCloud drive issues
- Cannot open assignments without toggling iCloud
- Unable to copy assignments from class to class
- Markings on student papers erase
- App takes forever to work correctly
- App erases student work while they are writing
- Students struggle to mark work as done
- Problems with PDF modification by students
- Many works lost
- App freezes when opening submitted assignments
- Not connecting well
- Real-time annotation editing issues
- Sync problems with ASM
- Old files appear for new students
- Deleting a past course brings it back
- Students cannot find submission drawers
- Cannot upload work
- When correcting work, it can be modified until the next student's file is opened
- Assignments take too long to appear
- Student progress takes too long or does not appear
- New students do not appear until Apple ID is signed out and back in
- Submitted work does not show as completed
- Setup issues with IT department and class creation
- Students not showing up in classes
- Progress monitoring not enabled
- Assignments not showing up for students
- App continues to ask to contact school administrator
- Cannot view app in test mode
- Cannot send work without Wi-Fi
- Kahoot challenges don't open as challenges
- Documents cannot be attached
- Login issues, redirected to irrelevant pages
Requested features
33 requests- Bring back iTunes U functionality
- Allow direct messaging with students
- Improve search functionality
- Add more class icons
- Enable delayed release of assignments
Show 28 moreShow fewer
- Color-code individuals on class lists
- More visuals for K-2 students
- Ability to add text notes to assignments
- Allow multiple photo uploads at once
- Improve PDF handling and editing
- Add a dark mode option
- Enable direct video conferencing
- Screen sharing/whiteboard functionality
- Incorporate formative assessment tools/rubrics
- Automatic feedback repository
- Login directly within the app using Apple ID
- Allow teachers to verify assignments as 'done'
- Make the app accessible for homeschoolers and private educators
- Add a Mac version
- Improve synchronization with ASM
- Allow duplicate courses with handouts
- Add acoustic notifications for new handouts
- Better integration with apps like Anton for progress tracking
- Notification option for received homework
- Allow students to photograph and send handwritten solutions
- Crop photos
- Improve editing of annotations to prevent overwriting
- Allow selection of multiple classrooms for distribution
- Enable cellular data usage
- Provide a way to report bugs directly
- Allow individual teachers to set up classes and progress monitoring
- Organize tasks by folders
- Receive notifications when students add/send files
Number Rack, by MLC
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Schoolwork
No in-app purchases
Number Rack, by MLC
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Schoolwork free?
Is Number Rack, by MLC free?
Which has better reviews, Schoolwork or Number Rack, by MLC?
Do Schoolwork or Number Rack, by MLC have ads?
Which is updated more often, Schoolwork or Number Rack, by MLC?
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