The iReady Lawsuit Exposes a Data Privacy Crisis Hidden Inside America’s Classrooms

When you discover that a tool your child uses on a daily basis—mandatory, school-issued, inevitable—may have been creating a thorough profile of them since kindergarten, a certain kind of uneasiness sets in. As a federal class action lawsuit against Curriculum Associates, the company that created the popular i-Ready platform, moves slowly through the legal system, many parents in the US are currently experiencing that.

M.C. v. Curriculum Associates, Inc. is the formal name of the case that was filed on December 22, 2025. Fundamentally, the lawsuit claims that Curriculum Associates, a business whose i-Ready suite is used by over 14 million students in grades K–8, has been collecting student data on a massive scale, creating what the plaintiffs characterize as extremely intrusive behavioral and psychological profiles on minors, and disclosing that data to numerous third parties for profit. The lawsuit argues that there was no meaningful parental consent for any of this. In February 2026, Curriculum Associates submitted a motion to dismiss. Early in April, the plaintiffs retaliated with their opposition.

Nicki Petrossi, a parent and host of the Scrolling 2 Death podcast, is the main voice behind the lawsuit. She has been remarkably open about her decision to file a lawsuit. Working with lawyer Andy Liddell and the EdTech Law Center in Austin, Texas, she has talked about being taken aback, not only as a parent but also as someone who had believed that public school systems were safeguarding the children within them. Reading her story makes me uneasy in some way. She’s not talking about a minor issue. Since choosing not to use a digital tool required by the school was never really an option, she is describing something that millions of families quietly accepted.

Important Information: iReady Lawsuit — M.C. v. Curriculum Associates

There are significant legal claims. The Federal Wiretap Act, several sections of California’s Invasion of Privacy Act, the Massachusetts Right to Privacy Act, the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, carelessness, and unjust enrichment are all mentioned in the complaint. That’s a broad net, indicating that the plaintiffs think the alleged violations affected several legal systems and jurisdictions at once. The scope of the legal theory alone indicates that this isn’t a straightforward complaint, even though it’s still unclear how the federal court will decide on the motion to dismiss and whether the case will eventually be certified as a class action.

The context in which i-Ready operates is what makes this story more complex than a typical privacy lawsuit. Instead of being used on personal devices, the platform is located inside classrooms. Kids don’t pick it. The app cannot be easily removed by parents. School districts all over the nation have made i-Ready a key component of their educational infrastructure, most notably in New Mexico, where teachers say the platform is used with every student three times a year. According to a 2016 Johns Hopkins study, there is no proof that i-Ready offers teachers useful information to support students’ learning. In light of the lawsuit, that discovery is currently making the rounds on social media, garnering new attention and posing the obvious and unsettling question: what exactly was the business model built around if the academic case for the product was always so weak?

It turns out that teachers have been skeptical for years. If you walk into any elementary school staff room that uses i-Ready, you’ll find at least a few teachers who will whisper to you that the platform doesn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. In order to pass the diagnostics more quickly, students purposefully underperform. Classrooms that previously relied on structured instruction have been given a tool that, according to some educators, replaces rather than enhances their professional judgment. The way educators discuss it reflects the fatigue of those who brought attention to an issue that no one in the administration wanted to hear.

Curriculum Associates may sincerely think that its data practices are morally and legally acceptable. According to the company’s motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs’ description of its business model is disputed. EdTech companies often claim that the information they gather is not used to create commercial profiles but rather to enhance educational outcomes. Given the particular laws mentioned in this complaint, it is another matter entirely whether that argument is valid in court. Courts are increasingly being asked to draw the line between behavioral profiling and academic data.

The larger EdTech sector is keeping a close eye on this case. Curriculum Associates is not the only business in this industry gathering large amounts of student data. It’s not even the only one under legal scrutiny. The EdTech Law Center has a number of ongoing cases, and the trend that emerges from them points to a rapidly expanding industry that was severely accelerated by remote learning during the pandemic, leaving privacy infrastructure years behind. Schools in dire need of equipment signed contracts without fully comprehending the terms of the agreements. Vendors were trusted by districts. Parents believed their homework had been completed by the schools.

As this develops, it’s difficult to avoid thinking that the lawsuit is actually about more than one platform. It concerns who made the decision to view a child’s focus, conduct, and learning styles as a commercial asset and who granted them permission to do so. Some of those questions may eventually be addressed in the courtroom where this case is being heard. It is a completely different question, one that no judge can fully answer on their own, whether the answers arrive in time to alter how the next generation of kids is treated in their own classrooms.