How Bad Is iReady? Let Me Know What You Think
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder opens a discussion about the iReady platform and invites educators and parents to share their experiences.
Key Takeaways
- EdTech effectiveness is questionable - iReady and similar platforms face growing criticism from teachers and parents
- Student experience matters - Asking kids directly about their experience with educational technology reveals important truths
- Audience engagement drives better understanding - Crowdsourcing educator experiences provides real-world evidence beyond company claims
Transcript
How bad is iReady?
I've personally never used it, but a lot of people recently have been asking their kids, hey, do you guys use iReady at school?
How do you like it?
And the kids seem to universally hate it.
Anybody who seems to know anything about it seems to hate it.
So let me know what you think.
I've been hearing that iReady has kids listen to math questions read aloud like they're not allowed to skip ahead they're not allowed to just answer the question they have to wait until the entire question is read i've heard that the problems don't really uh you know progress in a helpful way and i've heard that a ton of time is being spent on this platform that doesn't actually make a difference you know they say for fidelity at least 45 minutes a week and in some cases multiple hours a day are being spent on iready in the in the idea is that it will catch kids up, right?
If we put more time into this platform, then it'll catch up the kids who are behind.
I don't know that we have any evidence that that is the case.
And I don't know that we really have any evidence that any EdTech product works at scale.
Most things work in the pilot, right?
You try something new and just because it's new and people are enthusiastic about it and they're putting in a lot of effort, then it seems to work.
So we get some positive results, we get excited, and then we go big with it.
But nothing seems to really work better at scale than just old-fashioned paper and pencil, textbooks, teacher-directed instruction.
All the things that we have always done seem to outperform any technology program at scale.
And of course, this is not a neutral shift, right?
It's not like we're using technology because it's free.
It's very expensive, right?
It is thousands of dollars for just about any of these programs to operate in your school.
The technology itself costs money, the Chromebooks or the iPads or whatever.
And a lot of parents, I think, are...
increasingly concerned about how much time their kids, especially very young kids, are spending on devices at school.
So I'm calling this now.
I think we're going to see a huge backlash against educational technology and a huge return to paper, to textbooks, to face-to-face discussions, to things that do not happen on a tablet or a laptop.
Let me know what you think and let me know what you are hearing about iReady.