A month of milestones
Earlier this month, Newsela hit publish on its 10,000th article. Just six years ago, we were birthed into cyberspace with 100 painstakingly curated, leveled articles. Since then, over 1.8 million teachers and 20 million students have turned to Newsela as a trusted source for captivating content across ELA, social studies and science that's accessible, safe, personalized, and lights the fire of learning.
Today marks another milestone: Newsela has secured $50 million in new funding from TCV, a growth investor with a long history of backing platforms like Netflix and Spotify that have forever changed the way people consume content.
We started Newsela in response to your simple plea: students need better content.
That means delivering content that engages, excites, and sparks discussion. Our library now includes over 20 content genres and subject areas, including famous speeches, biographies, primary source documents, news articles, essays, and pro/con pieces.
It houses untold perspectives that tempt students to view history from a different lens. Sports articles that connect math principles to everyday life or invoke conversation about some of the most pressing issues of our time. It offers content that connects the wonders of science to topics students care about and introduces the prospect of ‘dream jobs’ like marine ecology, data engineering, and urban planning.
In just the past week alone, we’ve added articles on:
We’ve never shied away from the tougher topics, from national tragedies to divisive elections, natural disasters, immigration, race, climate change, foreign relations and everything in between. Our specially curated Social Emotional Learning Collection is designed to help you foster safe, thoughtful conversation while ensuring appropriateness, promoting diverse perspectives, and preserving control over how sensitive content is shared.
The funding we’ve just secured will allow us to deliver even more engaging content and invest in features that allow you to fully leverage its potential. We will also rapidly expand specialized offerings that allow districts to customize content experiences for their schools, aligned to their unique curriculum needs.
There’s a remarkable lack of access to quality content that connects with students and helps us move past lecturing and rote memorization to more modern social learning approaches. I believe the future of education lies in solving this challenge.
Let’s continue to solve it together.
Your colleague,
Matthew Gross