I’m grateful to Fordham for giving me the opportunity to respond to Curriculum Associates CEO Kelly Sia’s defense of i-Ready.
Curriculum Associates CEO Kelly Sia recently defended her company’s flagship i-Ready platform to Fordham readers. The program, used by millions of students, has come under fire from teachers, parents, and students as part of an ed-tech backlash sweeping the nation.
To set the record straight, Sia stated that Curriculum Associates “welcome honest scrutiny of our research.” She then pointed to a large correlational study out of Georgia State University that evaluated i-Ready use in one large southeastern metro district during the post-pandemic recovery as proof their approach “works.”’
The study behind the claim
She’s right to build her case from it. This appears to be the only independent, peer-reviewed study directly evaluating i-Ready Personalized Instruction outcomes in the program’s 15-year history. So let’s take her up on the offer and scrutinize it. When you read the fine print, a very different picture emerges than the one she’s selling to us.
Start with the number she would like us to focus on. To show her product lifts the achievement of traditionally underserved students, Sia quotes the study directly, and the quote sounds impressive: students who were “Black, male, FRLM-eligible, or with intellectual disabilities experience(d)…up to 14 weeks of instructional growth.”
