This money-making venture is not worth my money
As far as I can tell, the Institute of Reading Development (IRD) is a money-making venture, capitalizing on parents' natural desire to help their children learn. If you doubt me, try paying for a class, having a legitimate reason to cancel, and asking for a refund. They are not going to part with your money once they have it. And if you still doubt me, try taking a class and seeing what you actually get for your money. We signed up our daughter (then a rising 6th grader) for a class last summer (2023) because we wanted to help her catch up on reading after she got behind during the pandemic. After signing her up, as we kept observing her reading and talking online about her with another reading expert, we decided that there were specific interventions that we needed to make that were very different from the description of the course. (On a happy side note: We worked with her directly and intensively over the summer on those specific things and it helped a lot.) We called to cancel the class and explained that we had discovered some specific reading interventions that our daughter needed, and that the class was working at cross-purposes with what she needed. They absolutely refused to give a refund. In fairness to them, their refund policy is "You're out of luck unless you change your mind within 10 days of paying" and we did sign up and didn't figure out our daughter's needs within 10 days, so "bad on us" and they are within their rights to refuse a refund. But it's not the sign of a business that is actually trying to help people. They gave me a nonsensical reason that they couldn't give me a refund: Since we had already signed up, it would mess up their scheduling if they un-signed us up. (That made no sense, because they gave us a voucher to take a course any time in the next 3 years. What is the difference in their scheduling system between taking us out completely and letting us schedule something any time in the next 3 years?) We are not a family that throws away $300, so we signed my daughter up this summer to use the money we already paid. The class is *fine*. The teacher is nice, and seems to do a good job, but for $300, we get 5 online classes (1 hour 15 each) with about 8 students and access to 25 online homework assignments. So, ~$50 per hour for a 1 to 8 teacher-to-student ratio (with a bonus of giving your student even more online homework than they had all year in school). If that seems like a good deal, this is the program for you. Just make sure you don't change your mind (10 days) after you pay them.