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Parent tells Seminole school board i-Ready ‘did tremendous damage’ and urges districts to stop purchasing it
Summary
A public commenter at the June 17 Seminole County school board meeting urged the board to stop buying the i-Ready program, calling it ineffective and harmful to her child’s reading instruction and criticizing its use in place of classroom teaching.
At the June 17 Seminole County Public Schools board meeting, a parent urged the district to stop purchasing the i-Ready instructional program, calling it “a form of educational malpractice.”
Nina Sandberg, a parent and public commenter, told the board “I Ready did tremendous damage to my child's English education” and said the program had been used “in lieu of real teaching, in lieu of reading literature, in lieu of reading actual textbooks.”
Sandberg described her child's experience during the pandemic and afterwards, saying the child performed poorly on the Florida Standards Assessment and was placed in remedial reading where, she asserted, “the solution to i-Ready's failure was more i-Ready in lieu of actual real teaching.” She told the board the district’s purchase of what she called “garbage programs” prevents “real teaching” and said the district’s A-rating is “false advertising” if such programs are substituted for classroom instruction.
Board members received the public comment during the official public-comment period; the transcript shows no immediate action or staff response to the i-Ready remarks during the meeting. The consent agenda and student-discipline recommendations were later approved by voice vote.
Sandberg’s remarks are the public record and do not, by themselves, document district procurement decisions or program effectiveness; district procurement and program-evaluation records would be required to verify adoption status, expenditures and academic impacts.
