Newsela and NWEA announce new partnership
New York, NY – Newsela, a K-12 instructional content platform, announced today a partnership with NWEA to help teachers meaningfully differentiate instruction and engage all learners at a time when widening learning gaps call for even more tailored instruction. NWEA’s MAP Growth reading assessment gives educators the data needed to understand what students are ready to learn. That same data can now be used to automatically set student reading levels on Newsela.
Newsela offers authentic, relevant instructional content at five reading levels, ranging from current events and popular culture to primary sources, historical fiction, and examples of real world phenomena. NWEA’s MAP Growth assessments support growth for every student, illuminating each student’s learning needs, and helping teachers to target instruction and administrators to make well-informed system-wide decisions. Used together, Newsela and MAP Growth allow districts to quickly know students’ starting points and immediately provide authentic content they can access.
“When teachers assess their students, there should be zero lag time between receiving assessment results and plunging into lessons that are powered by hyper-engaging, authentic content that specifically addresses the assessment results,” said Matthew Gross, Chief Executive Officer of Newsela. “By combining NWEA's premier benchmark assessments with Newsela content that students love, teachers can finally achieve that goal.”
Newsela customers will be able to opt in to connecting NWEA MAP Growth data and Newsela together, and when they assess their students using MAP Growth, the data will be used to automatically set the student’s reading levels. They can then differentiate instruction with Newsela content using the Lexile® measure of reading level. The next time students take the MAP Growth assessment, their Newsela reading levels will be updated automatically, so instruction will continue to meet them where they are.
“As the education community turns its attention toward recovery from COVID-19 school disruptions, having powerful tools that integrate quality growth data with instruction is critical,” said Chris Minnich, CEO of NWEA. “I am excited for this partnership with Newsela that will help enhance the abilities of educators and ultimately help all kids learn.”
Through this partnership, Newsela and NWEA are excited to offer educators the ability to automatically and confidently differentiate instruction for all students with content that meets students where they are.
About Newsela
Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 2 million teachers and 25 million students in 90% of U.S. schools turn to Newsela for content that’s personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 10,000 texts in our platform and 10 new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.
About NWEA
NWEA® is a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization that supports students and educators worldwide by creating assessment solutions that precisely measure growth and proficiency—and provide insights to help tailor instruction. Educators in more than 10,000 schools, districts, and education agencies in 146 countries rely on our flagship interim assessment, MAP® Growth™; our progress monitoring and skills mastery tool, MAP® Skills™; our reading fluency and comprehension assessment, MAP® Reading Fluency™ ; our personalized learning tool powered by Khan Academy, MAP® Accelerator™; and our new assessment solution that combines growth and proficiency measurement. Visit NWEA.org to find out how NWEA can partner with you to help all kids learn.
Media Contacts
Newsela
Gina Smith
NWEA
Simona Beattie