Hola Epostates! What does it say about a so-called educational platform like i-Ready when its compulsory use transforms otherwise caring, decent, level-headed principals and teachers into stressy schoolhouse Velmas frantically waving Scooby Snacks in pupils’ faces? Nothing good, obviously.
For the blissfully uninitiated, an “i-Ready Challenge” is when an entire school descends into a collective quasi-corporate madness to ensure children are clocking maximum screen time on various i-Ready products. It’s driven by pressure from school district administrators who’ve been sold a dishonest bill of goods from i-Ready publisher Curriculum Associates: that there is scientific proof that their product will actually increase scores on the high-stakes annual standardized tests that decide school budgets, ratings, and leadership. This, of course, is the same science-washing lie which is now the basis of a landmark class action false advertising lawsuit against Curriculum Associates filed by plaintiff Center for Educational Progress.
Nevertheless, the i-Ready Challenge remains a fixture in schools all across the country. Unfortunately, given the degree to which kids almost universally despise i-Ready, this puts principals and teachers in a real pickle. Actually no, pickles are too sour. Instead, the i-Ready Challenge puts educators in a dystopian candy store of their own making, desperately bribing kids with enough refined sugar to trigger instant-onset diabetic ketoacidosis. They hold assemblies, pep rallies, and even record social media video exhortations for all the kiddies to hop aboard the i-Ready Sucrose Express. While this may enable yours truly to gleefully edit egregiously juvenile supercuts, it’s also a deeply misguided tragedy on multiple levels.
The i-Ready Challenge puts educators in a dystopian candy store of their own making, desperately bribing kids with enough refined sugar to trigger instant-onset diabetic ketoacidosis.
Educationally, mountains of legitimate, peer-reviewed research1 spanning over half a century have clearly established that using “extrinsic rewards” like sweets usually backfires. By dispensing cheap tangible rewards for completing tedious academic tasks, educators create a transactional environment which depresses kids’ intrinsic interest and enthusiasm for learning. In other words: students focus on the sickly-sweet treat or shiny bauble instead of, you know, mastering squat.
Less discussed however is the health and nutrition angle. In an age of skyrocketing American obesity rates compounded by the same sedentary, screen-based existence Curriculum Associates promulgates, introducing yet more cavity-inducing sugar into kids’ i-Ready-packed days is nothing less than adding fatty insult to cognitive injury.
And all the while, as i-Ready market penetration has continued to rise, American academic achievement continues to plummet — with the latest global PISA scores released just last week showing US kids at quarter-century lows, ranking 13th and 27th in reading and math, respectively.
Given how abundantly clear it is that the i-Ready Challenge in its current form is an abject failure, I’d like to issue a whole new kind of i-Ready Challenge to Curriculum Associates CEO Kelly Sia:
Dear Kelly,
I challenge you to recall i-Ready immediately on public health grounds. If you apply yourself and do a good job, I’ll even send you a Snickers.
Love,
- John
PS - I’d like to repeat my big WELCOME to everyone from Curriculum Associates’ crisis PR agency Heller Communications, who continue to pore over my i-Ready i-Reckoning reports oh so very carefully. I must confess it really hurts my feelsies the way you guys ignore my emails and continue to give me the cold shoulder. I know Epostasy is hardly a prestige NewsCorp outlet (AHEM!), but I’d still love to chat. Drop me a line, huh?
Related:
i-Ready i-Reckoning: Unmasking Curriculum Associates' Ed-Tech Scam
A critical exposé of Curriculum Associates — the shadowy firm that made e-learning platform i-Ready into mandatory misery for 14 million K-8 American students. Covering all the i-Ready drama: the teachers complaining it’s a boring waste of time, the kids screaming “i-Ready…
About John Allen Wooden:
Howdy. I’m a tech-traitorous writer, satirist, creative director, and dad of an i-Ready victim based in Los Angeles. Having done hard time in big online media, late night TV, ad agencies, politics, and parenting, I created Epostasy as my little lab for gleefully dismembering all those self-important things. Check out my tech-skeptical kids book series, Screen Time Tales, along with other projects at johnallenwooden.com
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fh0035519
Oh dear! Thank you for the shout out of the dangers of using extrinsic rewards like candy to convince kids to do their i-Ready--just as you say, intrinsic motivation plummets making it so that more candy must be promised for less work until kids just turn against learning altogether.