Florida Department of Education Approves Curriculum Associates' i-Ready® Diagnostic for Grades 3-12 as a Norm-Referenced Assessment for Private Schools

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass., June 5, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Florida Department of Education recently named Curriculum Associates' i-Ready® Diagnostic for grades 3–12 as an approved norm-referenced assessment for private schools participating in the Florida Tax Credit or Gardiner Scholarship Programs. Participating schools can now use i-Ready Diagnostic, which is part of the i-Ready program, in lieu of the Florida State Assessment or another approved assessment. i-Ready is currently the most widely-used supplemental mathematics and reading program in the state of Florida, actively used in 50 districts – or 75% of all districts in the state – and by more than one million students.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program provides funding to enable low income families to attend Florida private schools, and The Gardiner Scholarship Program helps families with disabled students defray the costs of enrolling in private, parochial, and home education programs. Private schools participating in one of the above-mentioned programs who want to use a new assessment must request to have it added to the approved list. As part of this approval process, i-Ready Diagnostic had to meet specific criteria demonstrating its overall quality, validity, and reliability, as well as academic accountability to parents.

"One of the reasons Florida private schools asked for i-Ready Diagnostic was because they needed a single, multi-purpose solution to streamline their assessment process while still providing valuable data," said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. "i-Ready Diagnostic does just that. In addition to normative information, it provides meaningful metrics such as Lexile®, Quantile®, growth, grade-level indicator, and prediction measures that inform individualized instruction to help all students succeed."

i-Ready Diagnostic's proven, research-based adaptive assessment recently received a positive review by the Buros Center for Testing, the highest ratings on the Screening Tool chart from the Center on Response to Intervention (Center on RTI) at American Institutes for Research, and near-perfect ratings in the Academic Progress Monitoring Tool category by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) at the American Institutes for Research. Independent research has also shown i-Ready Diagnostic to be highly correlated with, and an accurate predictor of results for the Smarter Balanced, PARCC, and other state assessments.

"Students participating in our i-Ready pilot are out-performing their non-i-Ready counterparts who have the same level of disability and who are receiving the same level of instruction," said Jose Suarez, founder and executive director of HOPE Youth Ranch, Inc. in Hudson, FL. "Our teachers are also loving the automation from the assessment to the resource assignment and tracking."

To learn more about the Florida Department of Education's approval of i-Ready Diagnostic for grades 3–12, visit http://www.fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/k-12-scholarship-programs/ftc/annual-assessment-requirement.stml. 

About i-Ready
Built to address the rigor of the new standards, i-Ready helps students make real gains. i-Ready collects a broad spectrum of rich data on student abilities that identifies areas where a student is struggling, measures growth across a student's career, supports teacher-led differentiated instruction, and provides a personalized instructional path within a single online solution.

i-Ready is currently being used this school year by over 10 percent of all K–8 students nationwide, serving more than 4.4 million students across all 50 states. Additionally, more than 1 million students use the program every school day.

To learn more about i-Ready, visit www.i-Ready.com.

About Curriculum Associates
Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company's products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students.

SOURCE Curriculum Associates

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