i-Ready Scores by Grade Level: The Official 2026-27 Chart and What It Means

i-Ready scale scores run from 100 to 800, and a child is on grade level when the score falls inside the band Curriculum Associates prints for the child's enrolled grade: 465 to 526 in Grade 4 math, for example, and 557 to 629 in Grade 4 reading. From the 2026-27 school year the i-Ready Diagnostic is called i-Ready Inform, and its placement table is unchanged since 2024-25. The publisher issues that table as pictures inside a PDF, which is one reason score charts online copy each other and disagree. This article reads the official table, explains the placement levels, shows why the same score is a different percentile in fall and spring, and answers the question parents ask next: is it an IQ test?

What is a good i-Ready score for each grade?

These are the overall-score ranges for the 2026-27 school year, from the start of Early On Grade Level to the end of Late, with the score where Mid On Grade Level begins. The publisher's own document says students who reach Mid are generally considered to have achieved grade-level proficiency. Reading first:

• Kindergarten: 362 to 479, Mid from 396
• Grade 1: 434 to 536, Mid from 458
• Grade 2: 489 to 560, Mid from 513
• Grade 3: 511 to 602, Mid from 545
• Grade 4: 557 to 629, Mid from 579
• Grade 5: 581 to 640, Mid from 609
• Grade 6: 598 to 653, Mid from 616
• Grade 7: 609 to 669, Mid from 632
• Grade 8: 620 to 684, Mid from 642

Mathematics:

• Kindergarten: 362 to 448, Mid from 373
• Grade 1: 402 to 472, Mid from 413
• Grade 2: 428 to 498, Mid from 441
• Grade 3: 449 to 516, Mid from 464
• Grade 4: 465 to 526, Mid from 482
• Grade 5: 480 to 540, Mid from 498
• Grade 6: 495 to 564, Mid from 514
• Grade 7: 508 to 574, Mid from 531
• Grade 8: 518 to 585, Mid from 541

Grades 9 to 12 have their own tables, high school math has separate pathways, and each domain score, such as number operations or comprehension, has its own cut-points; we have not reproduced those. The publisher's worked example shows how to read the table: a Grade 3 student with a Reading overall score of 500 falls in the 474 to 510 band, which is a Grade 2 placement, so the child is one grade level below.

How do i-Ready placement levels work?

Placement is by enrolled grade and is criterion-referenced: it describes what students are expected to know at each grade, with cut-points set by a standard-setting panel of more than 100 teachers. Reports use two labellings. The relative placements are Three or More Grade Levels Below, Two Grade Levels Below, One Grade Level Below, Early On Grade Level, Mid Grade Level, Late Grade Level and Above Grade Level. The five-level version groups them as Mid or Above Grade Level, Early On Grade Level, One Grade Level Below, Two Grade Levels Below and Three or More Grade Levels Below. Names such as "approaching grade level", which many sites use, are not the publisher's.

Two details surprise parents. Ranges overlap across grades by design: a Reading score of 600 is on grade for Grade 3 (Late) and for Grade 4 (Mid), and a math score of 500 is Mid On Grade Level in Grade 4 but one grade level below in Grade 7. And the top levels are rare: the publisher says at most 10 percent of students in each grade reach Late on the spring math test, and in many grades fewer than 5 percent do.

• Step 1: find the grade the child is enrolled in, not the grade of the lessons
• Step 2: read the placement printed on the report, or look the score up in that grade's band
• Step 3: read the percentile for the testing window, because it changes through the year even when the placement does not

Why is the same i-Ready score a different percentile in fall and spring?

The placement table is one table per subject, used all year: the publisher says the five-level placements are consistent from fall into winter and spring. What changes is the norm. The national percentile ranks are set for three windows, fall (to 15 November), winter (16 November to 1 March) and spring (from 2 March), so a fixed placement cut-point is a lower percentile as the year goes on. For the score where Mid On Grade Level begins, our lookup in the publisher's 2026-27 norm tables gives:

• Grade 4 math, 482: the 93rd percentile in fall, the 83rd in winter and the 68th in spring
• Grade 5 math, 498: the 90th, 81st and 69th
• Grade 8 math, 541: the 90th, 85th and 80th
• Grade 4 reading, 579: the 83rd, 74th and 67th
• Grade 5 reading, 609: the 86th, 79th and 74th
• Grade 8 reading, 642: the 79th, 74th and 72nd

How do i-Ready percentiles and growth targets work?

The percentile on a report, labelled a percentile rank, compares a student with a nationally representative group in the same grade and window. The norms in use for 2026-27 come from 2022-23 data and were new for 2024-25, replacing norms based on 2018-19 data, and they are lower than the old ones: the publisher's own example is a Grade 5 math score of 479, the 62nd percentile on the old norms and the 73rd on the new. The publisher describes the norm sample three different ways, more than 11 million students in a 2023 overview, more than five million on an administrator page and 6.9 million in reading and 10.1 million in math in the technical manual, so quote the one you cite with its wording.

Some anchors from the fall and spring norm tables: the 50th percentile is a scale score of 496 in fall for Grade 3 reading, rising to 529 or 530 in spring; for Grade 5 math it is 463 in fall and 482 in spring; for Grade 8 reading, 606 in fall and 617 or 618 in spring. The 95th percentile in fall is 575 to 578 for Grade 3 reading and 486 to 488 for Grade 4 math. The growth targets are defined, not fixed: Typical Growth is the expected growth based on the median growth achieved historically by students in the same subject, grade and fall placement category, and Stretch Growth is an aspirational target meant to put a student on a path toward proficiency. The manual adds that Typical Growth is not intended as guidance for what counts as sufficient growth.

How accurate is one i-Ready score?

The technical manual reports reliability coefficients of .95 to .99 for math and .95 to .98 for reading, which are model-based rather than test-retest figures, and standard errors of measurement of 6.3 to 6.5 points in math and 9.3 to 11.1 in reading. For Grade 4 reading the standard error is 10.4: at 68 percent confidence a single score carries about plus or minus 10 points, and about 21 at 95 percent. The 68 percent band, roughly 21 points wide, is nearly as wide as the 24-point Mid band, 579 to 602, so a score near a cut-point can fall either side of it on another day. Our explainer on IQ score margin of error shows the same arithmetic for IQ tests. The manual also reports that correlations between i-Ready scores and state tests run from about .75 to .85 in Grades 3 to 8.

How many students are on grade level nationally?

Curriculum Associates' State of Student Learning report of 24 July 2025, based on data from close to 14 million students in 2024-25, says national achievement has remained flat since spring 2023. Its appendix gives the share on grade level in spring 2025, against spring 2019: 57.2% in Grade 4 math (69.2% in 2019), 49.9% in Grade 4 reading (52.9%), 81.2% in kindergarten reading (88.8%) and 40.6% in Grade 8 math (42.2%). "On grade" in that report counts Early On Grade Level and above, a looser line than the Mid placement the publisher calls generally proficient, so these shares are not comparable with a state proficiency rate. We found no 2026 edition of the report.

Is i-Ready an IQ test?

No. The technical manual calls the test a standardized test of academic achievement and says its scores can be used as evidence when evaluating high-performing learners for gifted programs. We searched the whole manual and the word IQ does not appear in it. One named district, Westfall Local Schools in Ohio, says students must score at the 95th percentile on i-Ready to be considered gifted in math or reading. On a normal curve the 95th percentile sits near an IQ of 125 on a scale with a standard deviation of 15, but that is our arithmetic, not a publisher conversion: the percentile is a position among same-grade students on an achievement test in one window, and no i-Ready-to-IQ table exists. Use the IQ percentile calculator to see the conversion and its limits.

The same distinction runs through other school tests. Our guides to MAP Growth scores and Iowa Assessments scores make the point for two other achievement tests, achievement tests versus IQ tests sets out why they differ, and CogAT and NNAT scores, ISEE scores and CAT4 scores cover the reasoning tests that sit closer to IQ. For how districts use cut-offs, see universal screening for gifted programs and our guide to gifted cutoff scores.

Why do online i-Ready score charts disagree?

Because the publisher's cut-points are pictures, anyone copying them has to retype them. We checked two popular pages against the official table. The chart on thethinkacademy.com matched all 26 overall on-grade ranges we compared. A reply posted under TestingMom's score guide did not: it gave 517 to 602 as the typical Grade 5 reading range, where the publisher's on-grade range is 581 to 640. Check any chart against the placement label on your own child's report, and use the publisher's table, linked from the sources below, when the two differ.

A school score is one input. For a measured reasoning result with the scale stated, take the IQ Metrics test, and for what testing a child involves, see our guide to IQ testing for children.

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