Renaissance Launches Powerful New Teacher Experience for the 2024‒2025 School Year

Renaissance Next transforms instruction, provides real-time, actionable recommendations for teachers

BLOOMINGTON, MN (July 10, 2024) – Renaissance, a global leader in pre-K–12 education technology resources and insights, announces the launch of Renaissance Next, a uniquely powerful new teacher experience that aims to transform classroom instruction and empower educators with in-the-moment recommendations to support their most critical decisions.

“We started out by asking the question that is on the mind of every educator as they consider what’s next in their classroom: ‘How do I provide each learner with the right support, help, or acceleration?,’” said Todd Brekhus, Chief Product Officer at Renaissance. “That’s what led us to create Renaissance Next, which gives teachers actionable insights and quality instructional resources to meet their students’ needs.”

Renaissance Next provides teachers with real-time recommendations in the classroom, combining accurate assessment, purposeful practice activities, and instructional data in a single view.

Integrating key products from the Renaissance ecosystem, including Star Assessments, Freckle, Accelerated Reader, myON, and Lalilo, while surfacing recommended Nearpod resources based on math and ELA assessment performance, Renaissance Next harnesses the power of these tools to offer educators in-the-moment insights to guide teaching and learning. Teachers can quickly view students’ performance, understand each student’s progress and skill mastery, and review relevant lesson plans and activities to adapt, amplify, or adjust.

“Renaissance Next gives me a quick glimpse of where my kids are, where they need to go, and what I need to do,” said Julia Witges, a third-grade teacher at Carbondale Elementary School District 95 in Illinois, and a Renaissance Next beta tester. “It provides all of these tools that make my job so much easier, including the ability to differentiate down to individual student needs.”

Thousands of teachers with access to Renaissance products beta tested the new platform, which presents data that schools can use to inform decisions ranging from individual student learning to the district as a whole. The teachers’ feedback helped to shape the design of Renaissance Next, ensuring that it meets a wide variety of classroom needs.

“We plan to embed insights from Renaissance Next across our district and systems,” said Janice Pavelonis, the superintendent of Carbondale Elementary School District 95. “Renaissance Next complements our strategic plan for the 2024‒2025 school year, which involves students understanding their own data and progress, and setting their own goals, with support from and in consultation with their teachers.”

The insights and recommendations for differentiated instruction offered through Renaissance Next are made possible, in part, through the strategic use of AI. During development, Renaissance leveraged AI to better catalog its large library of pre-K‒12 instructional resources and practice activities, so that this content would be more readily accessible to educators in the classroom.

“The Renaissance database is a rich resource that incorporates over 38 years of real student and teacher data and insights,” said Brekhus. “The Renaissance Next platform brings those insights to teachers so they can truly see every student, and it leverages lesson and activity recommendations to accelerate learning for all.”

Renaissance Next is now available for the 2024–2025 school year. To learn more, click here.

About Renaissance

As a global leader in education technology operating in more than 100 countries, Renaissance is committed to providing educators with insights and resources to accelerate growth and help all students build a strong foundation for success. We believe that technology can unlock a more effective learning experience, ensure that students get the personalized teaching they need to thrive, and help educators and administrators to truly, fully, See Every Student.