i-Ready Personalized Instruction and State Assessment Performance

How is using i-Ready Personalized Instruction with fidelity associated with state test performance?

Earlier research focused on states in isolation, answering questions about i-Ready Personalized Instruction and state assessments on a state-by-state basis. This analysis builds on that work and pools data across states to allow for evaluations on a broader scale across a wider range of students. This approach presents new opportunities to ask questions about “for whom, and under what conditions” i-Ready Personalized Instruction fidelity use is associated with state assessment performance.

Curriculum Associates evaluated state assessment scores for more than 964,000 students in Grades 3–8 in more than 400 school districts. These analyses examined the difference in state scores between students who used i-Ready Personalized Instruction with fidelity and students using the program less consistently, accounting for fall performance.

Across all grades in both reading and mathematics, analyses revealed a consistent, positive association between use of i-Ready Personalized Instruction with fidelity and state assessment performance. Students using i-Ready Personalized Instruction with fidelity tend to score higher on state assessments than peers using less consistently, even after accounting for prior achievement and school context. Score differences between fidelity and non-fidelity students ranged from .14 to .24 standard deviations. According to Kraft’s benchmarks for education research, group differences of this magnitude are considered medium to large.