I was a heavy user last year and I liked a lot as second grade teacher. I do not understand pretty well what your complain is but the system worked perfectly well for all my kids. Including my Spec kids. I used both. Istation and ST Math. Istation is excellent and kids performed and improve a lot with this system. Sometimes some teacher do not know pretty well how it works, but it helps a lot in lower grades. English and Spanish. The most important thing is to follow the cycles of istation this is the main point and not all of the teacher understand the concept. Following cycles you can do grouping with kids at the same level and intervene in small group with them.
ST Math as well was a very good tool to work with. There are a new version of ST Math that I do not liked. The new version lack all the wonderful tools had the prior version of ST Math. There only puzzles now, and the teacher does not know were at they at.
The old version showed every thing about your class at a glance. The most important information in one page. And the main information growth information based in the curriculum progress and all this information is gone now with the new version. The new version is a bad copy of the old one, with a lot of more useless data. And the main thigh there is a divorce between what is your teaching objective and the practice students are doing in ST Math. There is “mandatory journey” now but no all the district in the country follow the same ST Math pacing guide. So you are teaching addition and kids are practicing measurement or you are teaching time and they are doing shapes. It does not help for reinforcement which is the most important thing.
Good teachers use ST Math as reinforcement but it is impossible now. In the prior version the teacher could change the objectives order to make it follow you pacing guide.
The new version allow you to change the order of assignments but it does not make any sense because the kid need to complete one stage to go to the other and again we are teaching shapes and they are working on money. So the new system need a lot of improvement. It is no so difficult just to go back to the prior version. I do not use it anymore because I does not help. I am doing now like most of the teachers do. When you have paperwork to do, you put kid to work on ST Math to do the puzzles.
Again so many minutes and so many puzzles does not mean anything to teachers or to students.
In the prior version my lower kids were working in more basic objectives… or the tower this is the way kids used to say… in which tower or cone are you? this was a common question for my kids. And other kids were doing high level stuff. I mean last year I had 8 kids working in third grade stuff. Which is a very goal to help student to be learning objectives and getting ready for next year. So the system was customized for kids to their own level.
Good teacher have to be aware that if the reach the goal and get to challenge level you have to put the kid into the next year objectives otherwise the kid will be wasting his/her time.
Bottom line. ST Math prior version till 2019/2020 was excellent. New version 2020/2021 get away from the new ST Math.
I hope it helps.