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📚 Reading apps and reading coaches · 🏫 Classroom tools

Read 180

By HMH. Visit Read 180

Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.

Read 180 is HMH's long-running reading intervention for students in grades 3-12 who read well below grade level. Class time rotates between teacher-led lessons, small groups and a personalized student app that teaches phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension and tracks progress toward goals. A placement test sets each student's path. It also supports newcomers learning English and students with dyslexia, and comes in a full and a lighter core-classroom version.

Our take: A well-studied option for older students far behind in reading; check that your child gets real teacher time, not just the app.

The facts
Ages it suitsgrades 3-12
What its terms say about ageSchool-licensed; the school gives COPPA consent for students under 13 and provides their accounts. (terms)
PriceThrough schools. District pricing, not public (Oct 2026).
Works onWeb
AccountA school account
AdsNone
In-app purchasesNone
The AI in itThe student software adapts practice to each student's results; HMH's policy says some de-identified data may go to third-party AI tools for scoring and feedback.

What's good

  • Built for older struggling readers
  • Mix of teacher time and software
  • Independent research behind it

Watch for

  • Takes a full class period in many schools
  • Software is a big share of class time
  • Families cannot buy it

Data and privacy

HMH's PreK-12 policy covers student work in text, audio, image or video; it does not sell student data, use it for targeted ads, or use personal data to train general AI models. Read the privacy policy.

Does it work?

Researchers at Columbia's Consortium for Policy Research in Education found, in a Miami-Dade regression-discontinuity study, that grade 7-9 students placed in Read 180 grew more in literacy than similar peers; HMH also cites a What Works Clearinghouse review.

In the Big Index

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Where these facts come from

Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.