The i-Ready Revolt Goes Mainstream

My son's and my interviews with NBC News

May 26, 2026

John Allen Wooden on NBC New Now re: i-Ready Revolt — NBC News Now

Greetings Epostates! The latest installment of An i-Ready i-Reckoning will drop in a matter of days, but in the meantime, here’s some more quality coverage of everyone’s least-favorite ed-tech snake oil — this time courtesy of NBC News.

My son Ward and I spoke with Liz Kreutz of NBC News Now for her broadcast report on the furious backlash from students, parents and teachers against i-Ready. I didn’t expect a legacy media channel to include a comment denouncing i-Ready as “simplistic, short-form brain rot,” but hey — when something walks like a duck and talks like duck…

Earlier this month, NBC’s Tyler Kingkade also spoke with Ward and me for his terrific long-form piece, “The revolt against i-Ready: Private equity-backed software faces parent, teacher and student fury,” in which he confirmed many elements of my own investigation, and covered important new ground.

In particular, Kingkade’s glimpse into i-Ready’s dystopian product road map is especially chilling:

Last month in San Diego, at a major conference on digital learning called the ASU+GSV Summit, Curriculum Associates previewed i-Ready’s latest feature: an AI tool that asks students to read aloud to the computer so the software can record and analyze their voices.
The feature, which is still being piloted, generates a report highlighting words a child struggled to pronounce. Teachers can listen to the recording and identify students who need one-on-one help.

Ponder that for a moment. With i-Ready’s forthcoming AI child voice analysis feature, Curriculum Associates will attempt to usurp yet another core human element of teaching: kids reading aloud in groups. Instead, CA would have children read alone to screens while hoovering up their voices — profoundly intimate biometrics — into the ravenous maw of proprietary i-Ready artificial intelligence, where they can be owned, cloned, tracked, and otherwise monetized. All because AI can supposedly hear a kid stuttering or struggling with vocabulary better than a teacher? The sheer predatory hubris of it is stunningly repugnant!

Kindly share with other budding epostates!

The Face to Launch a Thousand Contract Cancellations

About a year ago, this handsome young fellow (and a booing posse of his besties) told me in our back yard how i-Ready makes him miserable. Now he’s returning the favor!

My wife and I were extremely reticent when NBC News requested that our 14 year-old son Ward be included in their coverage of the i-Ready revolt. The Internet is a caustic cesspool, and our kids aren’t allowed to use social media, so we initially agreed only to a brief written interview. But as the inspiration for my little crusade, Ward felt invested, and insisted he wanted to share his experience — hoping it might help spare his beloved preschool cousins Finn and Rya from the ed-tech tedium that he and his friends have endured. And so we reluctantly consented to cameras, but warned him that trolls might come out of the woodwork. He replied, “what do I care what a bunch of online haters say?” As it turns out, so far anyway, our fears were unfounded, and the response from the online mob has been almost 100% positive.

More importantly, Ward’s voice and face as a Los Angeles Unified student in the national news is already having exactly the impact he’d hoped for. Over the weekend, LAUSD announced an all-new i-Ready policy that will radically slash use of the program, limiting it to “students performing below grade level.” That’s nowhere near enough — especially since said performance levels are based on i-Ready’s own junk metrics — but it’s a huge step in the right direction, liberating tens of thousands of kids from i-Ready, and dooming Curriculum Associates’ LAUSD contract in its present $20 million form. Huzzah!

We’re proud of you, Ward!

And on that cheery note, I bid you adieu, Epostates…

- JAW