Reply to Screens/Tech in Schools: iReady

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Also, just to add that of all the digital platforms used by my Dcps middle school, Iready is the only one that actively teaches remedial skills. Delta math is sort of up to the teacher but typically follows grade level content, Zearn pretty strictly follows the grade level content. All of them have weaknesses though and are probably overused[/quote]

But iReady doesn’t align with grade level content taught in DCPS.  Kids are tested on stuff they aren’t learning in class.  So what’s the point?[/quote]

In addition to reinforcing remedial math, I know kids (including mine) who genuinely learn a lot of above-grade-level math through iReady.

And as a PP said, it's used as a primary diagnostic tool three times a year.

I don't love EdTech and think schools should eliminate many of the programs, but iready is actually one of the more useful programs. I would eliminate every other app before going after iReady in elementary.[/quote]

Counter point- my kid learning nothing from iready.  She’s maxed out the score according to data and she still has to practice when she finishes all other work.  That isn’t differentiation, it’s busy work.  [/quote]

It's not possible to max out an iReady score because they will just give your kid higher level questions until they find her level. My kid's reading score in 3rd is equivalent to a 7th grade reading level. He "maxed out" the iReady 3rd grade content but the test adapts to find his true level, which is helpful for identifying books appropriate for his level.

If your child "has" to do iReady in class when she finishes other work, that's a teacher problem, not an iReady problem. But also you can get around it. I've told teachers I don't want my kid doing iReady when he finishes work early. We send in books for him to read or request math puzzles for him to work on, and they've always been fine with this. I've also taught my kid not to rush through work -- take time and review things, rather than rushing through only to get stuck doing iReady. He'll rewrite paragraphs and double check math, these are useful skills. Other kids rush in order to "play on the iPad" (i.e. do iReady). They aren't doing a good job with their non-iReady assignments either, they are just addicted to screens. That's a parenting issue.[/quote]

The reading diagnostic will max out on content when a kid starts out at least three grade levels above on the BOY. It then gives them the same or similar questions for the following two diagnostics. Although it’s possible to get a score that fits into a grade level more than three above, the content and the descriptions in the reports max out at three above. So my fifth grader gets a score that doesn’t appear in the norms tables until 10th grade but they get 8th grade content on the diagnostic. And then they get the same questions on the diagnostic all year. A little silly but I also understand nobody is super worried about my kid in this circumstance. [/quote]

I have a kid in the same situation and it doesn't bother me. The truth is that if you have a kid in middle elementary reading at a middle or high school level, there is no diagnostic test that will solve the problem of finding challenging content for your kid. I actually though iReady was an okay solution when my kid was in 1st and reading at a 5th grade level -- she wound up doing iReady nonfiction assignments during reading in class, and while originally I was like "why can't she read a book" that actually wound up being great because it introduced her to a different sort of reading and the reading comp questions challenged her in a way just reading a book from the library would not. Also it's very hard to find appropriate content for kids like this. A lot of middle school books are simply not appropriate for an early or mid elementary kid. It's hard.

But I actually still appreciate that the iReady diagnostics helped us realize what was going on early. That and the DIBELs testing helped us recognize she was an advanced reader and find ways to challenge her at home. Without those numbers we might not have realized how far ahead she was and might have misread her extreme boredom at school as inattention, which it wasn't.[/quote]

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