i-Ready

System of Measurement

The Curriculum Associates' i-Ready diagnostic reading assessment is a computer adaptive test that evaluates a child’s ability on key reading skills. Students receive questions in five reading domains: Phonological Awareness, Phonics (including letter knowledge), High Frequency Words, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension. Computer adaptive tests match the difficulty of test questions to the ability of each student. As students answer questions correctly, the test gets more difficult. As students answer questions incorrectly, the test gets easier. In both scenarios, the test adapts to find the precise ability of the test taker. The i- Ready Diagnostic then presents that information in a set of actionable, user-friendly reports designed to guide instruction. The following graphic provides additional details on the indicators used in the i-Ready diagnostic assessment and how they translate to critical skills on the Reading Success Pathway.

Data Validation Rules

This report shows student reading outcomes by comparing student's scores on the i-Ready diagnostic reading assessment in the Fall to their scores in the Spring. For this to provide the most accurate picture of growth it can, the report excludes the i-Ready scores for some students that could potentially skew the results. The data validation rules used to decide whether or not a student's scores would be included in the result are listed in this section. Included are strategies to circumvent common challenges.

Placement Level Rules

i-Ready assigns placement levels for Overall reading and each of the reading subtests according to a multi-tiered set of placement level rules. According to the i-Ready logic, a student is first assigned a Grade Level Placement according to their Scale Score. A student is then given a Relative Placement which depends both on the Grade Level Placement and one of three Placement Definitions that can be selected. The rules for Grade Level Placement and Relative Level Placement are described in this section.

Growth Expectations

i-Ready defines both a Typical Growth Expectation and Stretch Growth Expectation for each student's Overall reading scale score based on their grade and Grade Level Placement at the beginning of the school year. The excerpt below is i-Ready's description of these growth expectations in the i-Ready manual.

Data Limitations

Due to the adaptive nature of the i-Ready diagnostic reading assessment, a student's score might change slightly from assessment to assessment even without a change in that student's reading ability. The range in which a student's score is likely to vary is known as the Standard Error of Measurement (SEM). On average the SEM for a student's Overall reading scale score ranges from 9.3 to 10.9 scale score points. The SEM for a students subtest scale scores on average range from 18.8 to 36.9 scale score points.