FAQs

The i-Ready Diagnostic is an adaptive assessment that adjusts its questions to suit your student’s needs. Each item a student sees is individualized based on their answer to the previous question. For example, a series of correct answers will result in slightly harder questions, while a series of incorrect answers will yield slightly easier questions. The purpose of this is not to give your student a score or grade, but instead to determine how best to support your student’s learning.

i-Ready Personalized Instruction provides students with lessons based on their individual skill level and needs, so your student can learn at a pace that is just right for them. These lessons are fun and interactive to keep your student engaged as they learn.

i-Ready is designed to complement what is being taught in the classroom. Your student’s teacher will have information from the Diagnostic that shows where some extra review would be beneficial, which will help the teacher provide the best possible support. Your student will also work on online lessons that bolster the areas of greatest need. Your student’s teacher can see which lessons have been completed and offer help any time your student needs extra support.

1. Speak with your student about using i-Ready to help them prepare for class work. Also explain that i-Ready will show teachers where your student is doing well and which topics need some more review.
2. Encourage your student to take each lesson and quiz question seriously. Emphasize “thinking before clicking,” because just clicking through will not give teachers an accurate report of what your student knows and is able to do.
3. Encourage your student to use the tools that will appear at the bottom of the screen in some lessons.
4. Contact your student’s teacher about how often your student should practice at home, or with any other questions about i-Ready.

Log in to i-Ready from a computer following these steps:

1. If your student’s district/school uses a portal, your student should log in using their district/school portal credentials and then click on the i-Ready icon. 
2. If your student’s district/school does not use a portal, your student should visit i-Ready.com and log in to i-Ready directly on a computer using the credentials provided by their teacher.

For student security purposes, usernames and passwords are managed by your student’s school/district. Please contact your student’s teacher/school if your student cannot log in successfully.

Log in to i-Ready Connect from an iPad^® following these steps:

1. Download the free i-Ready Connect for Students app from the App Store®. iPads must be compatible with iOS 13 or above, such as the iPad Air 2, iPad Air 3 (2019), iPad 5th Generation (2017), iPad Pro®, or any other device that meets these requirements: https://cdn.i-ready.com/instruction/content/system-check/iReady_System_Requirements.pdf
2. 1. If your student’s district/school uses Clever^®, download the Clever app from the App Store. Your student should open the Clever app, log in using their district/school portal credentials, and click on the i-Ready icon.
   2. If your student’s district/school uses a portal, that is not Clever, students should open Safari^® browser, enter their school portal URL and log in, and click on the i-Ready icon.
   3. If your student’s district/school does not use a portal, they should open the i-Ready Connect for Students app and log in to i-Ready using the credentials provided by their teacher.

App Store^®, iPad^®, and Safari^® are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. Clever^® is a registered trademark of Clever, Inc.

For student security purposes, usernames and passwords are managed by your student’s school/district. Please contact your student’s teacher/school if your student cannot log in successfully.

• It is important to remember that the main purpose of these assessments is to allow i-Ready to personalize your student’s online learning path and provide information to your student’s teacher(s) so they can best meet students’ needs.
• In regular circumstances, students take their i-Ready assessments at school, but during these special times they might need your help in providing a supportive environment to take assessments at home. Click here for guidance and tools to help when your student is taking an i-Ready assessment at home.

To help prepare your student for the i-Ready Diagnostic, encourage them to:

1. Get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast the day of the assessment.
2. Try their best on each question and try not to rush.
3. Try not to worry about questions they do not know—remind them that it is expected they will get about half of the questions correct.
4. Use paper and a pencil to show work for math questions.
5. Be respectful of other students who take longer to finish.

To deepen your student’s learning in Personalized Instruction, you can:

1. Discuss your student’s progress on their i-Ready lessons.
2. Celebrate your student’s learning and growth.
3. Encourage them to use i-Ready at home (Note: They will need access to a computer and internet and login information. To check if your system meets i-Ready system requirements, please visit i-Ready.com/Support to run the system check).

i-Ready Diagnostic is an adaptive assessment, or a type of computer adaptive test. 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 cases, the test adapts to find the precise ability of the test taker.

Computer adaptive tests work a little bit like a doctor’s scale. If you put a kindergartener on a doctor’s scale and took a guess at their weight, in just a few clicks, you could determine the weight of the student. If 50 pounds is too heavy, and 40 pounds is too light, a few quick ticks of the scale hones in on the student’s precise weight. More importantly, after a few clicks, you no longer need to wonder if the student weighs 35 or 75 pounds—the scale has quickly eliminated those possibilities.

Computer adaptive tests use sophisticated algorithms to zero in on a precise measure of student ability. After starting students out at a difficulty level formulated on an educated guess (based on their chronological grade level in the case of i-Ready), the test adjusts up and down, with questions of varying difficulty, until the assessment reaches the level of difficulty that is perfectly matched to a given student.

The i-Ready Diagnostic is designed for students to get about 50 percent of the questions correct and 50 percent incorrect. The test will find a “just right” placement level for your student in the quickest, most efficient way possible.

The Diagnostic covers these Reading domains:

Phonological Awareness is the understanding that a spoken word is made up of different parts and that each of these parts makes a sound. For example, the word bat includes the sounds /b/, /a/, and /t/, and the word batter can be broken into two syllables that make the sounds /bat/ and /ter/. Phonological Awareness is an important building block for Phonics. Readers need to be able to distinguish, or make out, the individual sounds in spoken words before they can fully master matching sounds to letters.

Phonics instruction teaches students how to connect the sounds they hear in spoken words to the letters they see in written words. For example, a student who can connect sounds to letters knows to read “th” in then as a single sound /th/, rather than the sound /t/ and the sound /h/. Students have to learn many different connections between sounds and spelling patterns. In fact, there are so many connections that learning Phonics can feel like learning the rules to understand a hidden code. But this skill is mastered by taking one step at a time, learning one rule and then another, and so on. Once students can make these connections quickly and easily, they can really start to read for meaning.

High-Frequency Words are the words that appear most often in what students read. Words such as the, and, and it are high-frequency words. Because these words appear so often, readers must learn to recognize them automatically. Also, these words are often spelled in ways that can be confusing. Words such as could and there do not follow the rules that connect sounds to letters in most words. Learning to recognize these words automatically helps students read more quickly and easily, which gives them a better opportunity to understand what they are reading.

Vocabulary is the name for the words a student knows. The more words a student knows, the easier it is to understand what they read. Good readers know the meanings of many words. Students grow their vocabularies by hearing and reading new words, talking about words, and being taught specific words.

Comprehension: Literature describes a student’s ability to understand types of writing that are usually made up, or fictional. Stories are the literary texts that students read most often, but plays and poems are also examples of literary texts. A student who understands literature might identify the sequence of events in a story, discuss the meaning of a poem, or explain the lines a character speaks in a play. As a student develops as a reader, the student is able to understand stories, plays, and poems that are increasingly complicated.

Comprehension: Informational Text describes a student’s ability to understand types of writing that are usually true. Books about science or history are examples of informational text, as are newspaper articles or magazine articles. This kind of writing is often structured differently than literary texts. Informational text often does not tell a story, and it is usually organized into sections with headings. Additionally, it might contain charts, diagrams, and graphs that are important to understanding. A student who understands informational text might identify the main idea and supporting details, describe the way the writing is organized, or draw information out of a photograph or diagram.

The Diagnostic covers these Mathematics domains:

Number and Operations in Grades K–8 refers to the mathematics skills often thought of as arithmetic, from reading and writing numbers to adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing different types of numbers. This includes whole numbers, decimals, fractions, integers, and irrational numbers.

Algebra and Algebraic Thinking in Grades K–8 refers to mathematics skills related to seeing number patterns, understanding the meaning of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and using symbols to write and solve equations including those used to solve word problems. In the high school grades, this domain covers the Algebra topics related to using functions, equations, and inequalities to model mathematical situations and solve problems by reasoning quantitatively and extending the understanding of operations beyond the real number system.

Measurement and Data in Grades K–8 is a wide range of mathematics skills related to collecting, organizing, and interpreting numerical information, from telling time or using a ruler to measure the length of an object to using formulas to find volume or surface area. It also includes understanding tables and graphs, and in later grades, statistics and probability.

Geometry in Grades K–8 refers to a variety of skills related to analyzing two- and three-dimensional shapes. These include naming and classifying shapes using characteristics such as symmetry, number of sides, and angle measures, and in later grades, using congruence and similarity. In the high school grades, this domain covers Geometry and Measurement topics related to developing spatial geometric reasoning, connecting geometric properties and equations, writing proofs, and using statistics and probability concepts to analyze data.

These summaries of the domains found in the i‑Ready Diagnostic can be downloaded and shared using this PDF resource.

For more detailed information about accessibility features in i-Ready, contact your student’s teacher or education team.

Every time your student takes the Diagnostic, your student’s teacher may choose to send you a report. Note that the Diagnostic’s main purpose is to help teachers guide individualized student instruction, so they may decide not to distribute the report. You can reference the report to see how your student performed on the Diagnostic. Your student may also be able to view their score in their “Completed Work” section in “My Progress.” Check in with your student’s teachers to discuss progress toward goals, placement levels, and proficiency.

Download this PDF and watch this video to learn more.

The scale scores that result from the Diagnostic measure all students on the same scale so you can see which K–12 skills your student has mastered, regardless of their grade level. Student performance is measured on a scale of 100–800, with your student’s current score indicating the skills they have mastered up to that point in the school year and the skills they still need to work on moving forward.

Scale scores help your student’s teacher determine their placement level (within their current grade level, one grade level below their current grade, or two grade levels below their current grade). However, scale scores alone do not tell the whole story of your student’s skills mastery. The information on their Grade-Level Placement, domain-specific placement, areas of strength, areas for growth, and growth from one Diagnostic to another provides greater insight into your student’s academic progress.

• Ask your student’s teacher about your student’s Diagnostic results and how you can support learning at home.
• Discuss the data with your student, celebrate their strengths and progress, and collaborate with them on planning how they will reach their goals.
• Questions to ask your student about their data:
  • “What do you notice when you look at this data?”
  • “Can you identify strengths from this report?”
  • “What is something you feel like you are doing well?”
  • “What areas are challenging to you?”
  • “Let’s look at your data to see where and how we can work together to improve in those more challenging areas.”

This situation can happen, and teachers and schools have many strategies and programs to help accelerate your student’s learning. Having this information can help you, your student, and their teachers have the right conversations to make the needed progress.

A lower score does not mean your student did not learn or lost skills. Scores can be affected by things like stress,
distraction, taking the Diagnostic in a different place, and receiving help. This can be particularly common when
students are learning in different environments and under unique circumstances. Teachers take this into account
and use the data from i-Ready as one of many tools to understand your student’s unique needs and progress.

1. My Progress: Ask your student to click on My Progress at the bottom of the home page. Consider asking general questions such as, “How is i-Ready going?” “What are you learning about?” or “What are you working on?”
2. Lesson Stats: This section shows your student stats about their lessons.
   • Time-on-Task: Look at the number of minutes your student has spent this week on Personalized Instruction. Consider asking, “Have you met your goal?”
   • Lessons Passed: Look at the total number of lessons your student has passed this school year. Consider asking, “What is your goal?” or “What are you proud of?”
3. Lesson Streak: See how many lessons passed in a row your student has. Congratulate them and ask about what they are learning.
4. Completed Work: Ask your student to click on Completed Work. You will see lesson names and quiz scores. Consider asking, “What did you learn in ___ lesson?” “What did you enjoy?” “What did you find challenging?” or “How do these lessons relate to your learning goals?” You might also see your student’s last Diagnostic score. Consider asking, “What were your strengths?” “What are your areas for growth?” or “What are your goals?”

If your student has internet access at home and device(s) meet the technical requirements for using i-Ready, they will be able to log in at home and work on online lessons. Some schools limit students’ access to i-Ready outside of school hours. Check with your student’s teacher to learn more about using i-Ready at home. Your student should not complete assessments at home.

1. My Path. Your student should click the green Next Lesson button to begin the next lesson in your student’s personalized lesson path.
2. Teacher-Assigned Lesson. If your teacher has assigned your student additional lessons, they will see a blue button. Click the blue button to begin these extra lessons. Note: If your student only has a green button reading “Math Diagnostic” or “Reading Diagnostic,” this means the Diagnostic assessment has been assigned. Your student should not work on their assessment at home.
3. Complete lesson. Your student should complete their lesson, trying their best. Please do not offer support or help during the lesson, as your student’s lesson is just right for their level, and it’s important for their teacher(s) to get accurate data about what your student knows and needs to learn. Note: Your student should aim for 45 minutes of i-Ready instruction per subject per week and maintain a range of 30–49 minutes of Personalized Instruction. Your student’s school may have varying guidance.
4. Learning Games. If your student’s school has access to Learning Games, they can click the Learning Games icon on the bottom right. Learning Games provide mathematics fluency and skills practice that fosters internal motivation while encouraging productive struggle. Students should play games for roughly 20 minutes weekly.

1. Log in with your student’s username and password.
2. View your student’s “My Progress” box.
3. Click on “Completed Work” to see your student’s progress.

The default passing threshold for i-Ready lessons is 67 percent, or two out of every three questions correct, but your school district has the flexibility to adjust the passing rate. Please check with your student’s teacher to find out the passing rate in your school.