Across classrooms, districts, and households, many are asking an urgent question: What kind of learning environments truly serve students best?

With cellphone bans and debates about classroom screentime gaining significant momentum, teachers, parents, and education leaders are not just debating tools; they’re rethinking instruction itself. At the center of these conversations is a shared belief: learning must be intentional, effective, and grounded in student needs.

At Newsela, that belief is our foundation. Our mission as an education company remains unchanged: Meaningful classroom learning for every student, every day.

Newsela’s intentional, evidence-based approach to impact student learning

We equip educators with tools and resources that drive measurable learning outcomes and support teachers in what they do best: teaching. We advocate for purposeful learning experiences, regardless of the format an educator chooses to deliver. 

Teachers need enough flexibility to create learning environments that support every student. That’s why we design our products to work seamlessly across both print and digital:

• Teachers can print any Newsela article along with instructional supports, such as graphic organizers and activities, for screen-free instruction.
• Assessments can be completed on paper and scanned back into Formative’s platform for real-time insights to guide future instruction.
• Additional scaffolds—like read-aloud mode, translations into 40+ languages, and checks for understanding—are available digitally when teachers decide it’s appropriate.

The education landscape is constantly evolving. That’s why our team of learning scientists and product and curriculum experts continues to follow the latest in learning science, perform primary research, gather teacher feedback, and study the efficacy of the solutions we build, to ensure student outcomes remain front and center. When teachers incorporate our products intentionally, their students see 4 additional months of literacy growth, an additional year of growth in social studies achievement, and boosted math achievement by the end of the year.

The tension around screens

Much of today’s discourse on screentime is framed as a binary: screens vs. no screens.

The concerns about screentime and its impact on students are valid; we’re not here to assert that students should spend more time on screens. Research shows cognitive benefits to reading printed texts and practicing handwriting. Research also shows that word processors can have significant positive effects on writing by weaker writers.

That said, the broad-scale adoption of EdTech means that screen limits—or outright bans—would dramatically impact the classroom environment for both students and teachers.

The impact isn’t just less technology, it’s fewer opportunities to meet students where they are. 

Teachers need a flexible toolkit for high-quality instruction to support their students

We believe teachers know what’s best for the unique needs of their classroom. Students learn at different rates, and they bring varied experiences and backgrounds to the classroom, so it’s no surprise that one-size-fits-all instruction doesn’t work. 

Both print and digital can play valuable roles in effective instruction. Print can support focus, stamina, and cognitive process. Digital resources—whether those resources are accessed digitally by students or students use the printed versions from digital tools—can enable differentiation, accessibility, and real-time insights.

Newsela solutions enable teachers to design the right learning experience for their students’ needs and learning objectives through both digital and print implementation options. Teachers need classroom resources that are purposeful, flexible, and outcomes-based, just like we built Newsela products to be for them.

Equip teachers with engaging, high-quality resources—relevant, vetted, and multimodal 

Teachers can choose from vetted, engaging, standards-aligned texts, graphics, and videos to support multimodal learning across subjects with Newsela ELA, Newsela Social Studies, and Newsela STEM. 

Unlike traditional print materials—which can be dated, fail to engage students, and/or don’t always reflect the diversity of the classroom—we publish new, real-world content daily to Newsela’s online library of +18,000 pieces of classroom-ready, printable content. 

In addition to standards-aligned content to build background knowledge, educators can incorporate student-interest pieces, locally relevant content, current events, and more to help build past-to-present connections across subjects and help students see themselves in their learning resources.

Just like in instruction, students can benefit from multimodal assessments that allow them to show their knowledge in different ways (audio, video, drawing). Formative’s versatile platform gives students voice and choice over how they express their learning in ways they may not be able to accomplish with "pencil and paper" alone. Teachers can engage their students with +20 question types and allow them to respond via video and audio recording.

Support every student, every day, with scalable differentiation and scaffolds

Without the right differentiation and scaffolds, students often struggle to build the necessary skills and knowledge they need to succeed. They may feel isolated and risk falling behind. Other students may lose exposure to more challenging materials that provide them opportunities to stretch and grow their abilities. Newsela’s products enable seamless differentiation to build on students’ strengths and target their needs. 

Newsela ELA, Newsela Social Studies, and Newsela STEM offer high-impact scaffolds, available in both print and digital formats:

• Texts at 5 reading levels
• Spanish version of texts
• Quizzes
• Write Prompts
• In-text images
• AI-powered Graphic Organizers

Digital versions of text provide even more opportunities for differentiation—some that can be difficult to replicate in print—and allow teachers to scale support with multiple levels of scaffolds to meet students’ unique learning needs. Newsela offers many additional scaffolds in the digital texts, such as:

• Power Words & Tier III Vocabulary
• Read-Aloud
• In-paragraph translations to +40 languages
• Guided Highlighting
• Annotations
• Checks for Understanding

Formative’s platform also enables teachers to deliver the right support to the right student at the right time. In addition to printed versions of activities and assessments, teachers have access to digital differentiation tools, including:

• 20+ question types, including video and audio responses, to capture a richer, more authentic picture of student understanding.
• Translations, available in Balanced Assessment, support students in 50+ languages.
• Real-time feedback on student responses.
• Ability to seamlessly edit assessments—in the moment—to adjust answer choices, change rigor/DoK levels, etc., based on student needs.
• AI-powered scaffolds, such as hints and answer explanations.

Moving beyond the debate

The debate about screens vs. no screens shouldn’t be binary. Eliminating one in favor of the other narrows the toolkit teachers rely on to support the unique needs of their learners.

And in today’s classrooms, where students vary widely in readiness, language proficiency, and learning needs, flexibility isn’t a luxury. It’s a requirement.

How do we ensure every student has access to high-quality, engaging, and appropriately challenging learning experiences? It requires:

• Trusting teachers as decision-makers.
• Providing flexible tools that adapt to classroom needs.
• Grounding decisions in learning science and student outcomes.

In practice, the most effective classrooms do not choose between print and digital; they choose what best supports student learning.

That’s the future we’re excited to share with teachers.

And that’s the future we’ll continue to build toward: not screens vs. no screens, but a focus on what drives meaningful learning outcomes for every student, every day.