KENTWOOD, MI -- Eight-year-old Cora Hovermale fires up a computer at Kentwood's Meadowlawn Elementary and meets her chosen avatar - a casually dressed girl - ready to help tackle that day's lesson.

Ideally, i-Ready, the school district’s new $5.3 million software program, can hone in on why Johnny can’t read this passage or do that math and then give him lessons and tasks to build the missing ...