Jefferson County Public Schools will replace the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress with i-Ready for elementary and middle school students starting in the 2026-27 school year, a move that carries an annual price tag of roughly $465,000 and places the district at the center of two live lawsuits against the platform's maker.
JCPS board member Taylor Everett told the Courier-Journal that the platform charges the district by the number of students who will use it. A Curriculum Associates price quote dated April 23, 2026, for implementation beginning in 2026-2027 lists a list total of $529,370, savings of $64,991.50, and a net total of $464,378.50. That amount covers i-Ready Assessment and Personalized Instruction, Teacher Toolbox, and Professional Learning for K-8 students. Everett said he wanted to see how the first year of use goes.
JCPS had used MAP since 2018. District spokesman Barnard Baker said i-Ready is better suited to current district needs, describing it as an instructional diagnostic tool that pinpoints specific skill gaps such as phonics or number sense, rather than a benchmarking tool. Teachers began receiving i-Ready training in May 2026.
How the policy has been tried elsewhere
Curriculum Associates says more than 14 million students across the country use i-Ready, making it one of the most widely used K-12 educational apps in the United States. The company has pointed to several individual district case studies as evidence of the platform's effectiveness.
One such example is Scott County Schools in Georgetown, Kentucky. Curriculum Associates provided the Courier-Journal with a case study showing higher proficiency rates after students used i-Ready for two years. The study was conducted by the company itself, not by independent researchers.
A separate Curriculum Associates study using data from the Texas Education Agency's LASO program for the 2023-25 period found that students who used i-Ready Personalized Instruction with fidelity outperformed non-users on STAAR assessments across grades 4 through 8 in both math and reading. Effect sizes ranged from small to large. That study was also conducted by Curriculum Associates.
What the research evidence says
The body of independent and company-commissioned research on i-Ready's effectiveness shows mixed results, with findings varying by subject, grade level, and how consistently students used the tool.
A Johns Hopkins Center for Research and Reform in Education quasi-experimental study commissioned by Curriculum Associates examined a large southern California district during the 2021-22 school year, involving 5,330 students. It found that school-wide use of i-Ready Personalized Instruction was associated with significantly higher Smarter Balanced math scores, with an effect size of 0.109. Students who met usage guidelines scored higher. The design was quasi-experimental and not a randomized controlled trial.
A companion Johns Hopkins study of striving learners across four California districts in the same year found no statistically significant effects on Smarter Balanced ELA reading scores. Less than 20 percent of treatment students met the recommended usage guidelines of at least 30 minutes per week for 18 weeks. The researchers noted that low usage may have affected the results.
A Curriculum Associates longitudinal study that tracked nearly 10,000 students across 13 districts in 10 states found that the impact on math achievement after one year and two years was positive but not statistically significant. Only students who used i-Ready with fidelity across all three years, from grade 3 through 5, showed a statistically significant effect, with a Hedges' g of 0.24. Students who did not maintain that level of use showed no meaningful impact.
A HumRRO and Century Analytics quasi-experimental study commissioned by Curriculum Associates and using 2018-19 data found that striving readers in grades 2 through 5 who used i-Ready with fidelity showed statistically significantly greater reading achievement gains than comparison students. The researchers characterized the effect sizes as modest for an education intervention and noted that benefits were consistent for Black and Hispanic striving learners.
An independent correlational study published as a doctoral dissertation and indexed in ERIC found that existing limited independent research had not supported i-Ready creators' claims about increasing student achievement. In that study, total time spent on i-Ready was negatively correlated with end-of-year reading growth for all grades except fourth grade, and negatively correlated with math growth for all grades except first grade. Lessons passed were positively correlated with growth. The study used a correlational design, which limits causal conclusions.
The Courier-Journal reported that a recent study from an online education journal found very little progress by students after two years of i-Ready use.
Two lawsuits challenge claims and data practices
Curriculum Associates faces two active lawsuits that question both the accuracy of i-Ready's marketed capabilities and the company's handling of student data.
The Center for Educational Progress, a nonprofit think tank, filed a lawsuit in July 2026 under the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The suit alleges three core misrepresentations: that i-Ready's diagnostic assessment functions only as a crude screener, not a true diagnostic; that its personalized instruction assigns generic lesson sequences rather than truly personalized content; and that its efficacy claims rely on correlational studies that cannot support causal conclusions.
A second lawsuit, M.C. v. Curriculum Associates, was filed on December 22, 2025, by parents in California on behalf of K-12 students. The class action alleges that Curriculum Associates collects, uses, and shares student data with third parties including Google without proper parental consent, violating the Federal Wiretap Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and other state privacy laws. Curriculum Associates moved to dismiss the case on February 27, 2026; plaintiffs filed their opposition on April 3, 2026.
Curriculum Associates denies all claims in both lawsuits. A company spokesperson said that claims questioning the efficacy of its products and its commitment to student data privacy are without merit. The company stated that it does not sell student data, use it for advertising, or create commercial profiles of students. Its litigation page describes the data privacy claims as legally meritless.