Technology has played a larger role in U.S. classrooms since the coronavirus pandemic. All students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools receive their own devices and use online programs like i-Ready. But some families are questioning whether educational software is helping children learn — or hurting them.
Sixth-grader Anastasia Bates logs into her CMS-issued laptop and opens i-Ready. On her screen, a character stands in a cave before a waterfall, with numbered ledges on either side.
A voice instructs her to “cross the waterfall, using the lowest ledge that is on both sides of the cave.”
The game is designed to help her practice math factors, but Bates is skeptical.
“I can see what they were doing, but it just doesn’t seem like it was necessary for that,” Bates said.
That reflects how Bates, a student at Sedgefield Montessori, feels about i-Ready. She said the program can feel like a slog, taking time away from other classroom activities. She started a student petition asking CMS to remove the program — at least from Montessori schools like hers. So far, about 100 students at her school have signed it.
“Some people say it’s too challenging or too easy,” Bates said. “There’s a lot of extra steps that we have to do sometimes, and the narration’s annoying because you can’t skip it.”
Parent concerns
Several parents from multiple schools shared similar concerns. They questioned whether research shows the program is worth the investment and worried it may be replacing classroom instruction. Their anxieties also reflect broader concerns about the growing role of technology in schools — especially for younger children.
“They’re in a school, they’re in a classroom with a teacher and materials, and I don’t understand why you would put a child on a tablet in that context,” said Lorna Burns, a parent of first- and fourth-grade students at Sedgefield Montessori.
Another petition, started by families at Collinswood Language Academy, calls on CMS to allow parents to opt their children out of technology use entirely. It has nearly 900 signatures.
“You can absolutely get to stuff that’s not appropriate for school, and it’s distracting and not on task,” Burns said. “And I don’t blame the kids, because we used to have a computer lab. We used to have a classroom where we would go and learn how to use a computer. We used to have media literacy classes. Now, a kid who maybe has never touched a computer is just handed one in fourth grade.”
How i-Ready works
For some parents, i-Ready has become one of the most visible examples of technology’s expanding role in classrooms.
Students take a diagnostic test that identifies their strengths and weaknesses. Then, for about 90 minutes per week, they complete personalized lessons with activities and questions meant to help them improve.
Curriculum Associates, the company behind i-Ready, said the program is designed to support teachers by identifying where students need help and providing additional practice. The company points to research showing students who use the program see higher test scores. One Curriculum Associates report found, for instance, that North Carolina students who used i-Ready with fidelity “demonstrated higher state test scores and were more likely to be proficient in all grades.”
Families say they question the research, noting that studies showing i-Ready’s efficacy are often conducted by Curriculum Associates.
Allie Kaul has two students in Sedgefield and J.T. Williams Montessori School. She said i-Ready amounts to “gamified education,” no different from a highly stimulating app or game. She says it’s especially frustrating to families in Montessori schools, which pride themselves on real-world, hands-on exploration.
“A lot of the children actually expressed a lot of frustration over how much time they were losing and doing their own independent work and being forced onto this program,” Kaul said. “And the more that I was able to talk to parents, I found out that parents also had no idea what was going on.”
Concerns extend beyond Montessori families. Rachel Ware, a former teacher with children at Beverly Woods Elementary and Carmel Middle School, said she has heard teachers may not be able to review the questions students answer.
“I've also heard that teachers cannot see the questions that the kids are answering,” Ware said. “They’re pulling this data, seeing, ‘OK, this kid has mastered adding fractions,’ but they can’t actually see what he’s getting right and wrong.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools did not respond to a request for comment.
A complex picture
An official with Curriculum Associates told WFAE the company appreciates parent feedback and welcomes conversation, but maintains that i-Ready is backed by rigorous research that meets industry standards — including third-party research and independent external studies.
The official added that screen time averages less than 10 minutes per day per subject and said it differs from social media or video games. They noted that any games or activities are not meant to be understood as a core part of the instructional lessons, but tools to help drive home conceptual automaticity for students.
In response to concerns about teachers’ ability to review questions, Curriculum Associates said the personalized instruction lessons are meant to provide students with educational experiences — not necessarily to be seen as quizzes to review. But they added that teachers can administer reviewable digital assessments through i-Ready outside of the personalized instruction lessons. Still, they noted the company does take feedback like this into account and has made tweaks to the program in the past.
Ty Holmes, Curriculum Associates Chief Impact Officer, said in a statement that the company supports "responsible" use of technology.
“At Curriculum Associates, we welcome thoughtful conversations about responsible technology use in schools. We design our tools to support student learning, not replace classroom instruction, by helping educators identify learning gaps earlier, personalize instruction, and improve student outcomes. In North Carolina, the results have been overwhelmingly positive, with students using i-Ready Personalized Instruction consistently showing stronger reading and math outcomes and higher proficiency rates on state tests than their peers who do not. We are immensely proud of these success stories and the millions of students, teachers, and educators we work with across the country," Holmes wrote.
Still, questions about technology in classrooms remain complicated, said Krista Glazewski, executive director of the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State University.
“I think the evidence points to a really complicated reality,” Glazewski said. “It points to context, pedagogy, design, developmental stage, adults in the room, the nature of what’s being asked — all of that matters enormously.”
So is technology good for students? The answer, she said, depends on how it’s used.
Bates sees both sides. She said she encountered that complexity while researching i-Ready for her petition — using the internet.
It’s research she said she never would have found in a traditional textbook.
