Los Angeles Unified Launches Audit of Widely Used i-Ready Education Software
Parents, teachers and students criticize the widely used educational program for wasting classroom time and frustrating children with repetitive animations. Curriculum Associates, which has grown to nearly $800 million in annual revenue, defends the tool and notes more than 90% contract renewal rate. NBC News spoke with more than 40 stakeholders about the debate.
Nbc NewsLos Angeles Unified School District launched an audit of i-Ready last month after extensive complaints from parents, teachers and principals. Rocio Rivas, vice president of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board, said at an April 21 board meeting that she spoke to district educators about i-Ready and has yet to hear a positive comment.
Dozens of parents burst into applause at the April 21 Los Angeles school board meeting after Rocio Rivas's comment.
The episode marked a public flashpoint in a widening revolt against i-Ready, the educational software released in 2011 by Curriculum Associates that is now used by nearly 14 million students each year. Nearly one-third of students from kindergarten to 12th grade nationwide use i-Ready, including in nine of the 10 largest school districts.
The program takes up to 90 minutes per week of classroom time, and some teachers on Reddit and TikTok say its benchmark assessments eaten up 40 hours of instruction time.
John Allen Wooden opted his son Ward out of i-Ready. In Anchorage, Alaska, math tutor Katelynn Petersen has watched hundreds of students struggle with the software. "They all hate it — it’s so boring and so monotonous," she said.
In Rhode Island, school speech therapist Denise Champney said she has seen children become so frustrated with the software’s animations and spoken prompts that one punched the screen of his Chromebook. "It is just incredibly infuriating," she said. In interviews, 10 current and former teachers from New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and California described concerns about lost time and administrative demands with i-Ready.
Altair Maine, a high school math and science teacher in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, said i-Ready assessments turn him into a "glorified babysitter" of kids staring at Chromebooks. He cuts hands-on lab activities to make time for the tests. Jonathan Kryk is a language arts and social studies teacher at a K-8 charter school in Spring Hill, Florida.
Jonathan Kryk stopped using i-Ready and switched to small-group instruction and other materials provided by the state. The share of Jonathan Kryk's seventh graders passing state reading tests more than doubled after he stopped using i-Ready. 75 million for i-Ready over seven years.
Corey Allen Young, a spokesman for the Anchorage School District, said administrators observed positive trends in students’ math proficiency on standardized assessments since purchasing i-Ready. Curriculum Associates was founded in 1969. In 2008, the company had just enough cash to run the business for about 82 days and employed 100 people.
Rob Waldron was CEO of Curriculum Associates when he created the plan to turn it into a technology company. By the end of 2024, Curriculum Associates employed 2,400 people and had annual revenue of nearly $800 million. In 2017, Berkshire Partners bought an ownership stake in Curriculum Associates.
The Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in 2015. i-Ready benchmark assessments are taken by students three times a year. Curriculum Associates hosts webinars for parents and encourages schools to celebrate strong i-Ready results with banners and parties.
Its social media is full of teachers and principals testifying to i-Ready’s value. In a video posted in March, an elementary school principal in Virginia credited a 14% jump in math scores on state tests in part to i-Ready data. In a video posted in April, a teacher in New York said "I live in the i-Ready data reports.
In March, Sharon Ofek, a superintendent in Carmel, California, praised i-Ready’s math lessons for teaching problem-solving skills rather than memorization of formulas. Jeff Lisciandrello is an education sales consultant who has noted i-Ready’s user-friendly dashboard for administrators.
NBC News spoke to more than 40 school board members, administrators, teachers, parents, students, consultants and education policy researchers.
In 2022, a study paid for by Curriculum Associates at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Research and Reform in Education found an advantage among students in one district who used i-Ready lessons for math. The same Johns Hopkins researchers found mixed results in a study that measured reading scores with i-Ready.
Patrick Graff is an education policy researcher at the American Federation for Children.
Lawmakers in 16 states proposed restrictions on classroom technology this year, including screen time limits. Kelly Sia is CEO of Curriculum Associates. Kelly Sia said more than 90% of districts renew their i-Ready contracts.
Kelly Sia said i-Ready brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. "Teachers and administrators decide every year whether they want to hire or fire us," she told NBC News. Ty Holmes is chief impact officer for Curriculum Associates.
Ty Holmes said this fall the i-Ready benchmark tests will be shorter and the weekly lessons have become more interactive. "We look at the feedback, and we try to make adjustments to the product," he said.
