Jane Nylund is a parent activist and educator in Oakland.
She writes:
A bit of background: we are a family of two kids through OUSD, nearly 20 years with the district. Strong foundation in math and science, and some experience with statistics. As a classified educator in a high-needs school, I have recently spent time proctoring the I-Ready diagnostic in my fourth grade class. Out of concern for my math group, who all had pained looks on their faces, I was able to view some of the math test questions.
I was appalled at what I saw. Yes, I know the test is supposed to be adaptive, but the material that they expected the kids to try and answer was 6th grade level math, possibly higher. I noted the following:
1) Multi-step unit conversions in the context of a word problem2) Definitions/examples of independent and dependent variables3) Simplification of algebraic equations with two variables.
These types of questions appeared around the 15% test completion point for one student. It’s possible that there was some kind of operator error on the teacher’s part and that’s why these types of math problems showed up on the diagnostic. Nevertheless, the idea of creating a diagnostic that is essentially designed so that the kids fail 50% of the questions is a problem.
I could go on and on about how wrong this is and why this diagnostic test is completely unnecessary for our kids to suffer through. It almost seems like none of the adults in the decision-making process bothered to take it themselves. And if they did, and still thought this was all reasonable for students who are still learning math facts and long division, they have no business working around kids.
What I’m more interested in is how our district decided that I-Ready should be a thing. Did they just read the marketing and hype and just go along with it? Did they bother to check the “studies”, most of which were commissioned by Curriculum Associates (CA)? None of which were peer-reviewed. Or was it just an off-the-shelf substitution for the SBAC, like buying a box of cereal?
Anecdotally, I heard the Rainin Foundation provided funding for the project. It also turns out that the board voted on an item on the Consent Agenda that allows the district to share our kids’ I-Ready data with Johns Hopkins for a study; only two districts are part of the study. Why? And why Oakland? I’ll get to that. The Rainin Foundation contracts out with a consulting firm calledBridgespan. They, in turn, make all kinds of ed reform-based recommendations to their clients. So, it’s possible that Bridgespan, Rainin Foundation, and OUSD were working in tandem somehow to recommend I-Ready. Rainin agrees to fund it, and Johns Hopkins is gleefully rubbing their hands together at all the data they will capture. The district is notorious for never turning down a free data lunch, even if it’s an I-Ready garbage sandwich. It’s what they do.
What’s the feedback around I-Ready? Across the board, nearly everyone despises it: teachers, students, families. Who loves it? None other than Jeb Bush of Foundation for Excellence in Education. Yeah, that guy. Is this the same path that we should be heading down with yet another ed-tech privatization tool that just makes money for Curriculum Associates? Should we really be emulating what they are doing and supporting in Florida, a hotbed of dubious ed reform, profiteering, and graft? After an entire year of screen time, should we be supporting an ed-tech industry product that makes a fortune off the very thing that we have said is bad for our kids, even more testing and screen time? In typical ed-tech fashion, what our district is allowing them to do is collect our kids’ data for free, then later sell a product back to OUSD to get our kids to “improve” their achievement. At the same time, the I-Ready team will likely find that their products/services neatly dovetail into the brand-new residual gain growth model that the SBE has just approved. Yet another golden opportunity sought after by Curriculum Associates and I-Ready. Oakland has now become the perfect market for an educational tool that serves no purpose other than to punish and demoralize our children, waste our teachers’ time, demean the teaching profession, and make big bucks for Curriculum Associates.
Here’s my favorite part. According to the literature (See one “independent” study here), which students perform better on I-Ready? The ones who are already performing at a high level. Wow, there’s a prediction. Who would have thought? Apparently, high-achieving kids are willing to stick with it longer because they don’t fail the program’s adaptive algorithm right away. So it’s not quite as miserable an experience for them. In addition, there is no longitudinal peer-reviewed data showing the effectiveness of I-Ready on achievement. The referenced study (WestEd, funded by Gates and Silicon Valley Education Foundation) had no randomized test design, just for starters and there’s no way to show causation.
What’s the end game? Are the students going to be subjected to the IAB, ELPAC, SBAC, and now I-Ready? By the way, the program is so universally despised that our smart young people have figured out how to hack into the program to add time to the lessons so they can quit the program sooner. According to one Reddit user, “finally, the suffering is over”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Iready/comments/m4pw38/iready_is_over_for_the_second_time/
Another quote from an actual user: “As a student required to use this program twice a week before the quarantine and an hour a week during, this is an issue. The program has specific and bizarre questions with very broad categories and overall fails to teach anything, as students are turned off from engaging due to the sheer amount of frustration that it is caused from the lack of sensible instruction. It absolutely fails to properly give students the right lesson. I am a 7th grader in 9th grade math, however it gives me and many students 5th and 6th grade math, some students have had basic division and multiplication despite their actual math abilities. I give my full advocation and so does my boyfriend and all of my friends to the removal of this harmful and unhelpful program.”
Another example:
“FCPS (Fairfax County Public Schools, Florida) defends critique of the iReady assessment by asserting that teachers should use iReady as a screener to identify students “at risk,” not as a diagnostic assessment. I think this defense wears thin when schools begin to use iReady assessment data as a measure of growth on their School Improvement Plans. I think this defense wears thin when schools print out the reports and use them to sort and label children for intervention in data dialogue meetings. “
https://mathexchanges.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/why-iready-is-dangerous/
This author nailed it. What is supposed to be a diagnostic tool will be mislabeled and misused as a tool to “measure” achievement. News flash, we already have a flawed standardized test to “measure” achievement and we don’t need another. All this is also predicated on the usual idea that teachers have absolutely no clue how their kids are doing in class even though they are with their students for hours at a time, you know, teaching. I’ve already seen charter schools use I-Ready to boast of their superior “achievement” on social media. Charters aren’t using it as a diagnostic tool. They are using it as a marketing tool.
This author wrote an extremely well-researched piece on how I-Ready and other programs like it are all tied into privatization and profiteering. It’s a long read, but it really sums up all that is wrong with this kind of educational climate that promotes tech over experienced teachers and our willingness to be participants in its many forms, while sacrificing any real hope of authentic improvement.
https://dezignzbydeb.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/i-readymore-like-i-scam-and-other-deceptions/#comments
Finally, Curriculum Associates will embrace all that tasty Johns Hopkins data from our kids to sell their brand of misery to other unsuspecting districts. Our children have experienced enough “rigor” in their everyday existence this past year. They don’t need another ed-tech company treating them like lab rats and preying upon them for the almighty dollar. Just stop it, I-Ready. We’ve had enough. Do the right thing and cancel the contract with Johns Hopkins. That would be a move in the right direction. Thanks for listening.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just to be accurate, there is no Fairfax County in FL. Maybe VA.
Yes, thank you.
“It almost seems like none of the adults in the decision-making process bothered to take it themselves”
This should be required by state law by anyone who appears before a committee selling, promoting or mandating a standardized test. They have to take the test and submit their results before they get a microphone. It’s absolutely fair and if they’re promoting these tests they should model being evaluated on them for the children who have to take them. We’ll tell them they’re it’s just “information to help them” so none of them should object.
I would pay to see the Common Core test promoters math scores on that test. I reviewed it. It’s difficult. Given ed reformers penchant for innumeracy with the “100% graduation!” when they dropped the bottom 3/4’s of the students nonsense they peddle, I’d be surprised if 10% passed.
“None other than Jeb Bush of Foundation for Excellence in Education”.
All of ed reform leads one right back to Jeb Bush.
They really don’t need more than one ed reformer. Read Jeb Bush and you get the whole agenda in nutshell form.
Jeb Bush, who has not actually been elected to anything in decades, and apparently we’re stuck with his education agenda, forever. Last night the ed reform lobby passed the Bush Florida voucher scheme – in New Hampshire. Ohio, of course, already had it because for some reason my state also has Jeb Bush running education policy.
“apparently we’re stuck with his education agenda forever.” Yes, a truly horrendous mire.
But don’t say ed reform doesn’t have diverse viewpoints. The viewpoints run the gamut from Jeb Bush all the way to Newt Gingrich/Donald Trump’s Contract with America:
“It should be positive,” Gingrich said. “School choice, teaching American history for real, abolishing the ‘1619 Project,’ eliminating critical race theory and what the Texas legislature is doing. We should say, ‘Bring it on.’”
They’ll be taking the war against public schools to your kids public school now, so we have that to look forward to. A completely adversarial relationship with the schools and students they’re supposed to be serving. Public school students? They’re the collateral damage sacrificed for the broader agenda.
When will our administrators wake up and listen to those who use it with the students? It’s been garbage for over almost seven years if not more. Even then I knew it was garbage but the teachers were forced to use it with their students.
World War NCLB did not work. The data-driven drivel blitzkrieg failed, so now the data mongers are turning to guerrilla tactics in cities across the country. They buy your school board to blend in with the population and then, the school board attacks. They call the latest garbage next generation tests. Nothing new. It’s Competency Based Education, all testing all the time, and all the people are just victims of Wall Street’s greed. And they don’t just want your standardized testing data, either. They want your covid testing data too. The same companies are behind both. They want all of your data. All of it. Only with collective action can they be stopped.
Just like MAP tests! Big waste of time and money. The kids learn how to game the test to make it end. Adaptive testing is a nightmare for twice exceptional students who will sit there all day “playing the game” to try and “win”.
As someone that taught for many years, I like many others that read this blog know something about teaching and learning. Constantly frustrating students with material they have not yet learned is unsound pedagogy. It will turn students off and make “learning” feel like punishment. It is psychologically abusive. The best way to teach a sequential subject like math is to demonstrate and explain and give students guided and independent practice before moving on to the next phase of the topic. Teachers have been using what is known to build on what is yet to be learned, forever, and it works when it is paired with teaching students in a dignified, safe environment .
Our students do not exist to make money for private companies. This includes publishers, billionaires and politicians. School districts should stop buying “packages.” Curriculum should be developed by those that know how to teach, aka, teachers.
Parents and communities need to work to get outside interests out of their schools. Students’ needs must be the primary consideration in all educational decisions. Companies and their enabling politicians are vultures looking to pick the bones of public schools. I-Ready is a symptom of “special interest” sickness, and opting out is the only antidote that can protect our young people from corporate exploitation.
I want to subject the extremist billionaires funding this reform school madness to my type of rigor.
To understand what I mean by my type of rigor, it helps to know that I fought in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, and my type of rigor is brutal.
I-ready is in full force in my part of Tennessee. It is one of many farces.
We’ve been using it for ELA this year and gave the diagnostic for ELA and math in lieu of the SBAC. I teach gifted 5th and 6th graders and they hated it with a purple passion. My partner teacher (3rd and 4th) and I tried to convince our principal that it wasn’t appropriate for gifted students but they kept insisting that it was only 15 minutes a day, how bad could it be? We finally got the official iReady trainer to admit that it’s not appropriate for gifted students in a training – twice! – before they agreed that we only have to do the diagnostic. It’s heinous and I got no meaningful data from it.
How terrible for them all. Procrustean educational testing for profit.