Millions of students use i-Ready. But many parents view it as a villain in the ed tech fight.

“Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S. If you talk to an American parent about technology in the classroom, one brand of software comes up again and again: i-Ready. The software provides digital instruction that promises a “personalized” learning experience to identify students for intervention. It also has interim assessments that aim to monitor student progress. And to keep students engaged with instruction, it uses cutesy animations of cats and aliens to coax students along. All of that might sound straightforward. But Stuart Day is exasperated with i-Ready — on behalf of himself and his kid. “It’s just a bunch of digital busy work,” said Day, the father of an elementary-age student in northwestern Pennsylvania. “And he doesn’t like it. He gets really stressed out about it.” The resistance to i-Ready mirrors a growing resistance to much of the technology that’s made it into American classrooms. It’s an easy target, from the “i” at the start of its name to its backing by private equity . But i-Ready is also widespread in classrooms; roughly one-third of American students use it , according to Curriculum Associates, the software company behind i-Ready. The software’s detractors argue it subjects kids to excruciatingly repetitive lessons and practice exercises. Some parents, educators, and researchers are now skeptical that there’s solid evidence to justify having their kids use i-Ready. Parents in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia have fought against their districts’ contracts with Curriculum Associates. One parent has filed a lawsuit against the software , claiming Curriculum Associates improperly shares student data, a claim the company denies. In response to these mounting criticisms, Curriculum Associates claims its products are backed up by a solid library of evidence. The company’s leaders also deny that it should be the villain it’s been made out to be, even as they acknowledge it might not always be used as intended. “We believe student outcomes are the only metric that matters,” wrote Kelly Sia, the company’s CEO, in a widely shared LinkedIn post in April . “That means being clear-eyed about how our programs are used and whether that time is purposeful, connected to instruction, and supporting student growth.” But such messages aren’t likely to halt complaints about ed tech that involve everything from a lack of independent research to data privacy and students’ grievances. Beyond those concerns, Day believes i-Ready has helped turn the American school day into something unrecognizable. “When I was in school, I remember there were student computers. We didn’t take them home, like they do now … you couldn’t surf the web with them or anything,” he said. “I guess in my mind, that’s what I thought student computers were today, but they’re not like that.” Parents worry i-Ready leaves kids stuck academically Some of i-Ready’s presence can be credited to the pandemic’s aftermath. Though the software has been around since 2011, many schools adopted it during a push for more periodic assessment, in order to track how students were recovering academically after the disruptions caused by COVID. More than a dozen states list i-Ready as a state-approved assessment or instructional material. But in Facebook groups and elsewhere, some parents have expressed at least two concerns about the software that might be related: its reliance on game-like experiences, and whether it accurately captures where students stand academically. Kelly Clancy, a parent in New York City, thought it was odd when her 8-year-old tested two grades behind in math on i-Ready’s software. When she asked her daughter what was going on, the answer had nothing to do with math. Clancy’s daughter liked the noise an animated alien made when she got a problem wrong. So she intentionally botched the questions. “My daughter was enjoying the process of making these aliens look sad and make this funny sad noise,” Clancy said. That echoes complaints several other parents shared with Chalkbeat that they didn’t like i-Ready in part because their child tested below the level they thought their child would. Those worries might speak to a broader issue in education in which parents overestimate their child’s academic performance . But Clancy and other parents and teachers also express frustration that they can’t control the sequence of instruction or questions the software generates. The i-Ready algorithm is meant to offer up more practice for students when they struggle, meeting them where they’re at academically. But parents said their students ended up getting the same problems over and over again. In short, Clancy calls it a “blackbox” algorithm that makes kids frustrated. Not every parent or kid hates i-Ready. On Facebook, some parents espouse the benefits of mandating their kids practice i-Ready to grow academically, akin to the way parents relied on Hooked on Phonics in the 1990s. Ty Holmes, chief impact officer at Curriculum Associates, told Chalkbeat that criticisms that i-Ready improperly gamifies learning are overwrought. Holmes said i-Ready creates incentives to keep students engaged, just like teachers do when they give out gold stars to certain students. “i-Ready is a tool that they use for very specific and targeted reasons, and the overall sort of design of the classroom is still a human endeavor,” he said. Research debate highlights broader concerns about ed tech Evaluations by Johns Hopkins University scholars of i-Ready’s personalized instruction programs highlight debates about the research basis for the software, as well as for ed tech in general. The research, paid for by Curriculum Associates, found some promising results in math for students using i-Ready’s personalized instruction program compared with those just using the program’s diagnostic assessment. The results showed fewer benefits in reading. “It provides some suggestion that there can be gains from i-Ready, but certainly not a sufficient evidence base to just blanket adopt i-Ready in school,” said Steven Ross, one of the 2022 evaluations’ authors and a professor at Johns Hopkins’ school of education. The Johns Hopkins study is part of a body of research commissioned by Curriculum Associates. Critics say this research cannot be considered independent because the company paid for it, a common issue in the ed tech industry . The amount of funding from the federal government available to study educational products with true independence would maybe cover 5% of all products, Ross said. The only alternative is for companies to commission independent parties for reviews, he added. But Jared Cooney Horvath, one of ed tech’s biggest critics and a neuroscientist who runs LME Global, an education consulting firm, says the lack of peer-reviewed research or randomized controlled trials to measure i-Ready’s efficacy is a glaring concern. “If one of the most widely used tools in American education operates without an evidential base, this signals a broader problem with how we evaluate EdTech,” Cooney Horvath wrote in a March blog post . “Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, ‘Does this actually help students learn?’— or perhaps we never seriously considered this question in the first place.” Pressure mounts on school boards to reconsider i-Ready Scores of parents at big school districts across the country pressuring school boards to rethink school’s use of iReady. In D.C., a councilmember has proposed legislation that would compel city leaders to reconsider the district’s $1.5 million contract for i-Ready. And the Los Angeles Unified School District will audit the software after local backlash. Washoe County, Nevada’s school board recently considered renewing its contract for i-Ready for three years. But in May, the board reversed course and renewed it for just one after receiving about two dozen messages from parents and educators. Board members said they wanted to study student outcomes and screen time to see if they justified the cost of a longer contract. Calen Evans, president of the district’s labor union, said teachers are frustrated that students spend roughly 30 minutes a week using i-Ready, according to district data. “We need more instructional time,” Evans said. “We don’t have time for social studies. We don’t have time for science.” Clancy said districts should drop i-Ready, instead of having individual parents opt their students out. And Clancy said many of the problems her and other parents have raised about i-Ready occur with other ed tech products. “What we should do is think seriously about what it looks like to redesign our schools around what we know works,” she said. Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org .

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