MetaMetrics Partners With Curriculum Associates to Include Lexile Measures in i-Ready Diagnostic

NORTH BILLERICA, MA--(Marketwire - Aug 27, 2012) - MetaMetrics®, developer of The Lexile® Framework for Reading, has partnered with Curriculum Associates to include Lexile® measures in its i-Ready™ Diagnostic assessment program. i-Ready Diagnostic accurately assesses students, provides detailed, easy-to-use reports to help teachers provide differentiated instruction, and helps school districts across the country implement new and expanding requirements related to measuring student growth and teacher performance. The addition of Lexile measures makes i-Ready even more useful and helpful for educators, and provides additional valid information to help monitor and facilitate growth through individualized instruction.

In several states, including New York and Ohio, the i-Ready Diagnostic is one of the few select approved student growth measures for K-8 English Language Arts and Mathematics. To gain this recognition, Curriculum Associates demonstrated i-Ready's exemplary standard of validity and reliability (each and every item, not just the test as a whole), the adaptive nature of its technology, the rigor of its 28,000-student research base, the capacity to measure the growth of both low- and high-achieving students, and the ability to support implementation of the product.

"As we move from the adoption to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, we need reliable diagnostic assessments like i-Ready," stated MetaMetrics President and co-founder Malbert Smith III, Ph.D. "I commend Curriculum Associates for being at the forefront of the growing national trend to implement dependable assessments of student progress. Reaching hundreds of thousands of students across the nation, i-Ready provides crucial information regarding student growth. The addition of the Lexile Framework to the program will give additional power to educators to inform reading material and instructional choices."

Unlike other measurement systems, the Lexile Framework evaluates reading ability and growth based on actual assessment results, rather than generalized age or grade levels. Tens of millions of Lexile measures are reported annually from reading assessments and programs. Lexile measures help teachers, librarians and parents find books, articles and other resources within a reader's recommended Lexile range: 100L below to 50L above his or her Lexile measure. Because a Lexile level represents a student's reading ability and can be used to match the student with books and other materials at an appropriate difficulty, teachers and administrators whose students use i-Ready will be able to select -- and even purchase -- books at the right level and help students get the most out of independent reading. The Lexile measure data also helps local education agencies meet the requirements of the Common Core State Standards.

"Lexile measures set the standard for matching readers with texts and have a proven track record of providing valid and reliable measures of student reading ability," said Rob Waldron, President & CEO of Curriculum Associates. "The addition of Lexile measures to i-Ready Diagnostic will not only provide additional valid information that educators know well, but will also enable them to select appropriate reading material for individual students with a few mouse clicks. At Curriculum Associates, we are consistently focused on making teachers' jobs easier, and our new partnership with MetaMetrics is helping us take that mission a step further."

In addition to being built for the Common Core State Standards, the i-Ready family of products is a complete blended learning solution that includes more than 600 fully automated online lessons, plus hundreds of downloadable Tools for Instruction PDFs. The program generates a combination of lessons that are unique to each student's diagnostic result and provides an individualized learning plan for each student that is easy to understand and implement. Nearly 200,000 students used i-Ready in its first year (2011-12) and more than 500,000 students will be using i-Ready at the start of the 2012-13 school year.

Please visit http://www.i-Ready.com/empower for more information.

About Curriculum Associates
Founded in 1969, privately owned Curriculum Associates, LLC, designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screening and assessment tools, and data management resources. 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. For company and product information, visit Curriculum Associates on the Web at http://www.CurriculumAssociates.com or call 800-225-0248.

About MetaMetrics
MetaMetrics is focused on improving education for learners of all ages and ability levels. The organization develops scientific measures of academic achievement and complementary technologies that link assessment results with real-world instruction. MetaMetrics' products and services for reading (The Lexile Framework for Reading, El Sistema Lexile para Leer), mathematics (The Quantile® Framework for Mathematics), and writing (The Lexile® Framework for Writing) provide unique insights about academic ability and the potential for growth, enabling individuals to achieve their goals at every stage of development. Connect with the organization at: http://blog.lexile.com.