A major class-action lawsuit against Curriculum Associates, the developer of the classroom tool i-Ready, has started a national debate about student privacy. The lawsuit alleges that the platform tracks detailed student behaviors and shares that data with third-party advertisers without parental consent. As schools rely more on digital learning platforms, this case shows the difficulty of balancing school technology with children's privacy.
What Happened
The class-action lawsuit, M.C. v. Curriculum Associates, was filed in federal court on December 22, 2025. The complaint states that the i-Ready platform collects more than 80 categories of student data. Millions of students use the software, including those in nearly 60 Florida school districts. This collection goes far beyond basic demographic details such as names and ages.
Plaintiffs allege the software tracks real-time student activity. This includes how long children take to answer questions, their click history, and erratic mouse movements. The lawsuit claims that this behavioral data is used to build profiles that predict learning speed and flag potential learning disabilities. The suit also alleges that Curriculum Associates shares this information with third parties, including Google's advertising business and Google Analytics.
Curriculum Associates has denied these allegations, calling the lawsuit meritless. In its legal responses, the company maintains that it only collects data necessary to personalize instruction. It states that it never sells student data or creates commercial profiles.
The Bigger Picture
The dispute occurs during a period of increased regulation for educational technology. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently updated its Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rules, setting a compliance deadline of April 22, 2026. Under these new rules, edtech platforms must get explicit, separate consent from parents before they can share a child's data with third-party software development kits (SDKs) or analytics tools for commercial use.
These rules aim to stop invasive profiling. Academic research shows that digital profiling models can combine academic, social, and behavioral features to predict learning risks. Without strict limits, these models can create permanent, biased records of a child's early difficulties in school.
Many school districts struggle to monitor the software they purchase. According to the U.S. State of EdTech 2026 report by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), 58 percent of districts are understaffed to support instructional technology. Only 56 percent of districts require software vendors to provide basic product safety information during procurement. This leaves gaps in student data oversight. As we previously reported on classroom AI integration, tracking tools often outpace schools' abilities to evaluate their safety.
What This Means for Families
For parents and educators, the i-Ready lawsuit highlights the data footprint children leave behind during daily schoolwork. When a learning program monitors clicks and mouse speed, it builds a behavioral profile.
If this data is sent to advertising networks, companies can use it to target children with ads or build persistent consumer profiles. Even when data remains inside the school system, automated assessments that flag learning difficulties can follow a student throughout their academic career without human context. School boards and families must understand exactly what information these tools collect and who has access to it.
What You Can Do
- Ask your school administration or school board for the district's Data Privacy Agreement (DPA). This contract contains the specific terms signed with Curriculum Associates and other software providers.
- Ask your school principal about opt-out options. Parents have rights under federal laws like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). You can request that your child complete assignments using offline resources or restrict third-party data sharing.
- Push your local school board to adopt stricter software evaluation standards. School districts should require all vendors to provide transparent safety audits and ban tracking tools before software enters the classroom.