Renaissance® Blog
Shareable tips and insightful thoughts on K–12 education. Subscribe to the Renaissance Newsletter and get the latest posts delivered straight to your inbox.
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May 14, 2021
By Amanda Beckler, Senior Research Analyst; David Butz, Senior Research Analyst; and Eric Stickney, Senior Director of Education Research In the new Winter Edition of our How Kids Are Performing report, we estimate the lingering impacts of the pandemic on […]
May 7, 2021
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many families decided not to enroll their children in preschool or kindergarten this school year. This raises two key questions as we look ahead to Fall 2021: (a) Will the children who arrive for preschool, […]
April 23, 2021
By Dr. Gene Kerns, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer If we’ve learned anything about surviving a pandemic, it’s that the process has more in common with a marathon than a sprint. Nothing about this was going to be over […]
April 16, 2021
By Dr. Gene Kerns, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer With the recent passing of Beverly Cleary, we lost a giant in children’s literature. She is among a small, select group of authors whom massive numbers of children just seem […]
April 9, 2021
Life has changed significantly since 1986. Back then, Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee ruled at the box office; Tom Clancy and Judith Krantz had best-selling novels; the Commodore 64 and Apple McIntosh were popular computers; and a talk show called […]
March 26, 2021
By Dr. Gene Kerns, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer In my role at Renaissance, I regularly present to teachers and administrators on student literacy. Recently, I’ve received many questions about the Science of Reading: what this term truly means, […]
March 19, 2021
By Dr. Gene Kerns, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer March 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 school closures. Do you remember our naivete as this all began? We were thinking in terms of weeks rather than months, […]
March 12, 2021
March is National Reading Month. At Renaissance, we’re celebrating student literacy with the release of the new 2021 edition of our What Kids Are Reading report. We’re also marking the 35th anniversary of Accelerated Reader. In this blog, you’ll learn […]
March 5, 2021
In the mid-1980s, educator Judi Paul created a program to help motivate her four children to read over the summer months. Word of her program’s success soon spread—and Accelerated Reader was born. To celebrate thirty-five years of AR, we’re taking […]
February 19, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on education, from widespread building closures to concerns over the scale of learning loss caused by the disruptions. As of February 19, 2021, the federal government has passed two pieces of legislation—CRRSA […]
February 12, 2021
Each year, Renaissance’s What Kids Are Reading report lists the most popular books at every grade level, and also provides new insights into K–12 students’ reading habits. With the 2021 report arriving on March 2, we wanted to look back […]
January 29, 2021
Last November, we released our How Kids Are Performing report, which uses data from five million student assessments to quantify the impact of COVID-related disruptions. While most students experienced modest declines in reading performance, math performance was impacted more significantly, […]