Anonymous wrote:Here is the reason schools are pushing iready. Teachers TAS goals (15% of impact score) is tied to getting 80% of their class to meet their stretch goals. It’s mandated by the district and has forced teachers to really push iready so they have a chance of achieving this.

So the 80% is incorrect. It should NOT be the sole criteria of getting a 4 on TAS. Some schools can reach higher than 55% but they are deemed "i-Ready Super Stretch Schools". 55% is nowhere near 80%.

DCPS teacher here. All school should be using the diagnostic assessments for reading and mathematics at the beginning of the year (BOY), middle of the year (MOY), and at the end of the year (EOY). As a teacher it is a great way of finding out where each student is with regards to being on grade level, as well as below or above grade level. It's not perfect but I'd say it has a 90% or higher rate of successfully determining where a student is. Within a month of teaching, or even less, you can easily corroborate this from classroom learning and experience.

The test is adaptive and will offer questions according to the student's ability. I'm at an elementary school and in general they take at least an hour. Any quicker and program flags the student as rushing and might need to retake the assessment. It is not timed. It can more than 2 hours, which means it is spread over two days.

My school has the lessons, I believe all schools should have access to the lessons as there is a definite push from "above" to have students complete lessons assigned to them on their i-Ready pathway. The student pathway is specific for each child's needs so I think all students get challenged wherever they score. They get lessons they need to review or push them forward. I think CAPE are scores are one measure but i-Ready scores, growth from BOY to EOY, are a better measure of student learning. CAPE just tests grade level material. There is a correlation between growth and CAPES scores.

Are the lessons useful? Yes. They introduce new content for students who are above grade level. They review for students on grade level. For students below grade level the lessons try to fill in the wholes. I guess it is substituting for a teacher, but that is what online learning is. All students still get instruction for the day's lesson. These lessons are just a part of the 90-minute block.

The stretch goal is often seen as 1.5 years of growth. It is hard to legitimately reach but students can achieve it with great teaching, hard work by all involved, and determination by the student. I have seen it done. No fudging of numbers. A lot of the time it is the student who does the majority of the work. They are motivated. They do the lessons in addition to all the classwork. A quick search says only 25-35% of students achieve the stretch goal. Yes, my admin wants the stretch goal in my TAS part of IMPACT. It is not 80%. That is almost impossible.

I hope this has helped.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not impressed. I know some kids do iReady at home to get skilled at iReady. So, you can game the test and some kids do. Are they more skilled at reading and math? No. And instead of reading at home or solving logic games, they are doing iReady.

I have seen wild swings on iReady with my child; swings that their model said was not possible. So it works for some kids and not for others. My child is three grades ahead in one subject so that may be the issue. But regardless, it is a blunt tool like most edtech but I am not sure that it teaches the kinds of skills that our kids need to become curious learners.

I agree it becomes less useful the further ahead your child is. It only scores them three grades above their current grade even if their score is in the range for an even higher grade. But when they are on grade level I think it can be useful, especially for math, to repeat what they need reinforced.

The placement is weird if your kid is far ahead (because it seems aimed at actually justifying placing a child in a different level class, where it then makes sense to have a higher bar for acceleration than for staying in your actual class year, rather than assessing objective grade level). However, because of how the test works, a single mistake way above grade level has a much bigger effect, so scores way above grade level swing much more wildly as well. I have a kid who is 1 grade level ahead-ish and her scores are much more consistent (marching upwards in expected small jumps most of the time) than my kid who is 2-3+ grade levels ahead where we get wild leaps and then small falls and then wild leaps again. He got scores 15 points apart two days apart, which was a 2 grade level difference because the bands are so narrow for 2+ grade levels ahead, which is insane and nonsensical.

Here is the reason schools are pushing iready. Teachers TAS goals (15% of impact score) is tied to getting 80% of their class to meet their stretch goals. It’s mandated by the district and has forced teachers to really push iready so they have a chance of achieving this.

Anonymous wrote:It's interesting that (almost?) everyone here is mentioning iReady Math but it's also iReady Reading at schools too I think.

Yes my kid's school does both diagnostics. They used to only consistently assign lessons and practice in math but now they seem to to the reading as well. It seems like the lessons only go up to 8th grade and therefore your kid can max out on the lessons if they are performing above grade level.

It's interesting that (almost?) everyone here is mentioning iReady Math but it's also iReady Reading at schools too I think.

Anonymous wrote:I am not impressed. I know some kids do iReady at home to get skilled at iReady. So, you can game the test and some kids do. Are they more skilled at reading and math? No. And instead of reading at home or solving logic games, they are doing iReady.

I have seen wild swings on iReady with my child; swings that their model said was not possible. So it works for some kids and not for others. My child is three grades ahead in one subject so that may be the issue. But regardless, it is a blunt tool like most edtech but I am not sure that it teaches the kinds of skills that our kids need to become curious learners.

I agree it becomes less useful the further ahead your child is. It only scores them three grades above their current grade even if their score is in the range for an even higher grade. But when they are on grade level I think it can be useful, especially for math, to repeat what they need reinforced.

I was resistant to iready but have come around, mostly related to math. My second grader’s teacher assigns iready lessons based on what each child needs/what they worked on that day, so I find that it reinforces what they are learning. And we only use it for about 10 minutes per day, so for us it is a targeted use that seems to have benefit.

I am not impressed. I know some kids do iReady at home to get skilled at iReady. So, you can game the test and some kids do. Are they more skilled at reading and math? No. And instead of reading at home or solving logic games, they are doing iReady.

I have seen wild swings on iReady with my child; swings that their model said was not possible. So it works for some kids and not for others. My child is three grades ahead in one subject so that may be the issue. But regardless, it is a blunt tool like most edtech but I am not sure that it teaches the kinds of skills that our kids need to become curious learners.

Here's what I've found about iReady as an intervention (not the "diagnostic" assessment):

There is only one study of i-Ready personalized instruction for reading (i-Ready “intervention”) that was commissioned by Curriculum Associates, the company that owns i-Ready (Randal et al., 2020). This study only included “striving learners,” defined as students “who tested two or more grade levels below their current grade at baseline” (Randal et al., 2020, p. 5). Therefore, this study cannot draw conclusions about the effects of i-Ready on students who perform slightly below grade level, at grade level, or above grade level in reading. Further, this study uses only i-Ready diagnostics for the baseline measures and outcome measures, so it is not possible to determine if i-Ready reading intervention improves student performance on anything other than i-Ready. Reported effect sizes ranged from 0.12 to 0.14, which is considered a small effect. Randal et al. (2020) describe the effect sizes as “modest” (p. 8).

In short, we know very little about iReady -- essentially, that for kids who were a bit behind, more iReady may make them slightly better at iReady.

IReady lessons are adaptive, which is good. And it can support separate placements in the 4 domains (numbers & operations, algebra & algebraic thinking, measurement & data and geometry), which is good. However, it starts you a couple of lessons behind where you placed… which is good for little kids to build confidence & familiarity and doesn’t take that long, but for older kids where the lessons are multi part and take awhile, having to the redo 6-9 segments that make up 2-3 lessons can mean a month of review and be boring rather than confidence building.

Online learning in general is not a substitute for teacher-led instruction. iReady is one of the company’s that’s really figured out how to market itself. Does it actually help though? No, not really.

A mix of both like most things. Good is that it gives some kind of baseline to know where a kid is academically. The lessons target skills your kid missed which can be helpful for closing gaps. It’s also filler for when kids are done with their work. It’s the only math program DCPS provides us so when higher kids finish their work they get to do iReady.

So there are two different things: the diagnostics and the lessons. The diagnostics take a long time because they are adaptive and untimed but the school seems to think they provide good data on where kids are and I don’t really disagree, based on how my kids do. We have less experience with the lessons bc our school didn’t really push any except in math. My DC did not love the math ones and would rather do IXL or other programs. They just started doing the reading lessons. My DC is meh about them but the school seems to be giving them to her as part of trying to differentiate a bit, since she tests a few grades above. She says they are fine but easy.

DCPS schools in ES seem to push iReady a lot. Is it decent or just crap? What's the consensus out there?