Our Commitment

Across all Renaissance products, we aim to produce content that is fair, appropriate, and free from bias. Our products seek to provide all students with a “mirror” so they may see themselves uplifted in the content, and a “window” so they may learn about others’ cultures, customs, and practices. In doing so, Renaissance products reflect our multicultural society composed of unique individuals and do not portray different groups in adverse or inappropriate ways.

Establishing connections for continual personal and professional development

Accelerating learning for children of all ethnic and social backgrounds calls for cultural competence in our content development teams and cultural responsiveness in our products.

Here are the steps we’re taking to increase both:

Partnering with the Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP) to provide workshops on diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusion.
Partnering with Inclusivity Education to provide a diversity audit of curricular materials.
Facilitating internal cross-product working groups devoted to addressing inclusiveness of content.
Assembling an external advisory committee of experts to review content across all Renaissance products for content appropriateness and to provide feedback on initiatives.

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Sharing best practices

Our team is dedicated to understanding and sharing best practices when it comes to developing culturally responsive large-scale education products.

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Supporting marginalized students through culturally relevant pedagogy

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How Accelerated Reader supports Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

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Developing culturally relevant items for Star Assessments

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Webinar

Cultural Relevance Versus Construct Relevance: How Do We Create Culturally Responsive Assessments?

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Advisory committees and councils

Renaissance Content Quality Advisory Committee

Renaissance’s Content Quality Advisory Committee is focused on increasing representation of diverse people in our products.

Learn more about the committee

Renaissance Spanish and Biliteracy Advisory Council

The Renaissance Spanish and Biliteracy Advisory Council is committed to creating positive outcomes for Emergent Bilingual/Multilingual students.

Learn more about the council

How we represent the communities we serve through our products

Freckle has been working to increase representation and inclusion in our content. We have added a diverse range of hairstyles and accessories to the avatar store and recently engaged in a comprehensive training with the Disruptive Equity Education Project.

Learn more about Freckle

Star focuses each content development cycle on increasing representation of specific racial and ethnic groups to increase the cultural relevance reflected in question items. We also analyze performance on all items to check for and eliminate items containing potential bias.

Learn more about Star Assessments

Accelerated Reader is increasing representation and inclusiveness through strategic curation practices. We have also established quality assurance processes to ensure appropriateness and sensitivity when writing quizzes for books with sensitive content.

Learn more about Accelerated Reader

myON has curated booklists for commonly searched for diversity and inclusion related keywords. We also continue to seek out publishers that feature underrepresented authors as well as diverse characters and topics.

Learn more about myON

myON has curated booklists for commonly searched DEI-related keywords. We also continue to seek out publishers that feature underrepresented authors as well as diverse characters and topics.

Learn more about Lalilo

Nearpod develops culturally relevant content and ensures cultural responsiveness by considering the ways students from different cultures prefer to demonstrate their understanding. We also provide a wide selection of lessons focusing on diverse cultural groups.

Learn more about Nearpod

Renaissance’s Commitment to Equity in Education