Why iReady is dangerous
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Anonymous
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Many elementary FCPS students will come home with score reports from iReady today (June 15–last day of school). Take a look at this short piece (see link below) from a a highly regarded math coach in FCPS about what this assessment is and why it’s a dangerous path for FCPS. It addresses only the math part of iReady, not the reading part.
FYI—Your kid was pulled out of instruction 3 times this year to sit for this. Even kindergartners had to take this. Many principals and teachers hate iReady because it is a waste of time. It’s important that parents know what their kids are being assessed on and what the point of it all is. https://mathexchanges.wordpress.com |
Anonymous
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IReady is a screener it will help find students that need extra help that were overlooked before and years later needed much more intervention. It is a good thing.
In order to get the information needed, you need to administer it more than once. It also shows growth- so that you can see if a child learned during the time period. One time tests or screeners do not do this. |
Anonymous
| I've appreciated the information that iReady has provided for me about my students. It takes up a minimal amount of time when compared to the DRA or MRA. We need something to help identify those kids who are struggling. I wish that the county would provide math assessments to schools as it does for each unit in science. Currently, teachers create the assessments. Upper grade teachers can use a question bank on eCart, but lower grade teachers often have to come up with assessments from scratch. My concern is that individual schools may be interpreting the pacing guides differently and there is a different amount of rigor being expected at different schools. If we had county-wide common assessments created by the county math office, we might have a better chance at increasing the rigor across the county. |
Anonymous
| I agree with the PP. I teach third and I lost so much more instructional time when administering the DRA. |
Anonymous
| All of the criticisms of iready math can also be made for the math SOL and just about every other math test given in elementary school. Poorly worded questions are sadly not unique to iready. Also, many schools make groupings or decide advanced math placement based on the SOL. At least iready seems to give more information than the SOL does. |
Anonymous
| Why does the author have a hard time with the dog and cat questions? The two numbers given are 7 and 11 and the picture only shows cats and dogs, so obviously it is a subtraction problem of 11-7=4. I remember getting questions like this growing up. |
Anonymous
No, that's a terrible question. Any of the equations are the right answer, the way that math is taught now. |
Anonymous
No, only 1 answers the question how many are dogs. |
Anonymous
Exactly. The teacher shouldn't be complaining if she doesn't even understand this. |
Anonymous
I agree. It's pretty obvious that the correct result has an = followed by the actual answer to the question. 11-7=4 correctly answers the question. 7+4 = 11 is part of the same fact family, but it answers the question "If you have 7 cats and 4 dogs, how many animals do you have altogether?" 11-4 = 7 answers the question of how many cats there are, if you had been given that there are 11 animals and 4 dogs. It's pretty basic math, and it's not at all dissimilar to the problems my kids received on regular fcps homework and exams in 1st grade. |
Anonymous
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This is the 2016 chart, but if the numbers are roughly the same this year as they were then, both of my kids' results stayed near the same percentile rank for each of the fall, winter, and spring screenings. Also, both of them performed around the percentiles that I would have expected.
http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7539/urlt/i-Ready-Table-6.pdf |
Anonymous
I think it is a terrible question because it is much more important for a child to understand that three of the answers are mathematically equivalent than it is for a child to be able to translate "animals minus cats = dogs" into numbers. |
Anonymous
I'm pretty sure for decades I've seen similar questions to "If there are 11 cats and dogs and 7 of them are cats, how many are dogs" which was the question at hand as well as the statement "There are 7 cats and 4 dogs which equal 11 animals total? Show the equations that represent these animals." It's not an either or. This was just a basic subtraction problem and kids need to know how to do subtraction problems as well as mathematical equivalents. There was no reason this teacher should have been confused. |
Anonymous
That’s untrue. Equations being part of the same fact family does not make them the same, and understanding how to translate a word problem into a properly structured equation is important for more advanced math later. |
Anonymous
| I got no information on iReady about my students that I didn't already know. It took a lot of time and blocked up the computer labs for instructional use for a long time. It was stressful for many kids and many kids just put any answer to be done. If there is going to be a screener it needs to be much shorter. If it is a screener it doesn't need to go two grade levels above. Screening means look for problems. If the kid is that high there isn't a problem. If you want to know if a kid is struggling, ask the teacher. The county has many assessment tools. My special ed kids have been thoroughly assessed and have IEP goals, so making them do this was a waste of time. I have documentation of learning. It's not valid when kids are just picking any answer to get done, and test anxiety is a huge issue for kids. |