21st Century Learning

Ohio District Eliminates 102 Reading and Math Assessments by Using i-Ready

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/19/15

An Ohio school district has gone public with its use of online software to decrease the number of assessments it requires. Plain Local School District has been working with the i-Ready Diagnostic & Instruction and Ready programs from Curriculum Associates for a couple of school years. In that time, the school system has reported that it has been able to eliminate dozens of assessments in its K-8 schools.

According to Curriculum Associates, i-Ready Diagnostic & Instruction aligns with the Common Core State Standards and gives each student an individualized, adaptive test. As a question is answered, the program provides a harder or easier question to help calibrate the level of understanding the student has on a topic. Based on how well the student does on the assessment, he or he is assigned to online instruction designed to build skills. The software includes reporting. Ready is a set of curriculum products that teachers use to guide their reading and math instruction.

Cassandra Sponseller, director of Teaching and Learning & Gifted Services at Plain Local School District, said, "We previously had an abundant amount of assessments in place in order to obtain the student data needed for both state and federal requirements. We needed to find a way to streamline this process and free up more time for teaching and learning to take place, and i-Ready provided us with that solution."

She said that by consolidating much of the assessment work through i-Ready, the schools have eliminated "102 different assessments while still being able to collect the robust data needed to meet our requirements and effectively inform our instruction."