In the $94 billion North American ed-tech market of 2026, Curriculum Associates stands as a dominant pillar. Founded in 1969, the firm operated for decades as a sleepy, also-ran textbook publisher before pivoting to the nascent e-learning market in the late aughts. Today, the company is a private-equity-backed juggernaut with more than 2,700 employees and $750 million in annual revenue — derived overwhelmingly from America’s taxpayer-funded public schools.
Curriculum Associates’ flagship product is i-Ready. First launched in 2011, it has evolved into two tightly intertwined screen-based products. i-Ready Inform is the diagnostic half: standardized “adaptive” tests given three times per subject annually. The other half is i-Ready Learning, which translates each student’s i-Ready Inform scores into algorithmically generated lessons called “My Path.” This takes the form of gamified multiple-choice math and English questions delivered by infantile cartoon characters with names like “Yoop Yooply” and “Snargg.”
“Gamified multiple-choice math and English questions [are] delivered by infantile cartoon characters with names like Yoop Yooply and Snargg.”