About What Kidsa are Reading 2025 Our very own Gene Kerns penned the Introduction to this year's report, which shares the reading habits of 5 million K--12 students, from 21,259 schools across all 50 states and DC, who read 173 million books during the 2023--2024 school year. This year's report explores the importance of kids spending 15 minutes on reading practice daily--a manageable amount for busy readers that our data show is the sweet spot to see real gains in terms of literacy achievement and vocabulary exposure. Two new report features highlight our findings, The Magic of 15 Purposeful Minutes spread on pp. 8--9, and the research questions and answers found in our four new Inspired to Read spreads kicking off each section of the report: What Kids are Reading is organized by grade range, with each section beginning with an Inspired to Read spread bursting with reading motivation. At the top of these pages, we've included two book lists: (1) Recognizing Resilience, featuring an array of stories whose characters display grit and tenacity, allowing readers to feel seen as well as broaden their understanding and empathy for others, and (2) Series Sets, where we've highlighted a book series for each grade level that was read by students who also favored a series from the Top Print list for that grade. Spanning the bottom of these pages, we explore The Magic of 15 Purposeful Minutes by examining the impact of kids spending just 15 minutes per day reading, using data from our Accelerated Reader database for the 2023--2024 school year. The following page begins with a Teacher Recommendation, from a reading survey conducted in January 2025 of educators spanning all grade levels, who answered a short series of questions regarding student book reading. Then, a map displaying Signature Books, that ranked higher in popularity in each state than they did nationwide, and four Fresh Finds, comprising books that kids first quizzed on during Fall 2024. Each individual grade level includes a Highest Rated book that received the most stars from kids in that grade who opted to rate books on a 4-point scale after reading and quizzing. Next up, two ranked booklists, Top Print (from Accelerated Reader) and Popular Digital (from myON), both display books by series, where appropriate, to allow as many unique authors and titles on the lists as possible. The myON books also do not repeat from grade to grade to include even more distinct titles. Finally, each grade level features a curated list of Authentic Spanish texts. The Full Report and additional information is available online: <https://www.renaissance.com/wkar>.

Early literacy practice with Lalilo was associated with higher levels of growth in general literacy achievement. Students who used Lalilo more intensively and for a longer period experienced the most growth in their literacy skills. Less intense and less frequent use of Lalilo was associated with relatively less achievement growth, but even lighter use was associated with more growth relative to students who did not use the program at all. These results remained consistent across struggling readers, English language Learners, and students from Title I schools.The full report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R63694>.

The International Certification of Evidence of Impact in Education (ICEIE) has granted Renaissance's Freckle for Math the Silver badge (ESSA Tier 2) for Efficacy in enhancing learning outcomes.The full certification is available online: <https://eduevidence.org/products/>.

The Phase II evaluation of Lalilo, independently conducted by WestEd, focused on the program’s impact on first grade students' literacy skills and reading attitudes. The quasi-experimental study involved 29 teachers and their students, divided into treatment and comparison groups. Results included detecting that Lalilo had a large significant positive impact on students’ oral reading fluency skills. This is an important outcome because fluency is both a critical component of literacy and a strong predictor of later reading success. Effects were particularly strong for students needing the most support. Teachers and students reported high satisfaction with the program, and in particular teachers highlighted its effectiveness in improving both student engagement and reading skills.Citation: Soo Ping Chow, A., Nilsen, K., Cruz, J., & Ciancio, D. (2024). Impact and implementation evaluation of Lalilo: Phase II report. WestEd.The executive summary is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67886>.(Email research@renaissance.com to request a copy of the full study from the Renaissance Research Department.)

From the Introduction: "To provide optimal power and usefulness within our Star Assessments and many of our practice products, Renaissance takes a unique approach to content creation through the development of custom learning progressions. In general, learning progressions are descriptions of successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about key disciplinary concepts and practices across multiple grades, which outline intermediate steps toward expertise (Pellegrino, 2011). Learning progressions lay out in words and examples what it means to move toward more expert understanding (Wilson & Bertenthal 2005) in a subject area. While not unlike a traditional scope and sequence, learning progressions are far more thoughtfully developed and emphasize a holistic, cross-grades focus."The Full Report is available online: <https://renaissance.widen.net/s/jdm9kgx5cw/780549-lpfocusskills-whitepaper>.

From the introduction: "In the spring of 2024, Renaissance undertook a special study to gather further reliability and validity evidence for its four Star CBM rapid automatic naming (RAN) measures. These four assessments measure a student’s ability to rapid name colors (Rapid Color Naming (RCN), pictures (Rapid Picture Naming (RPN)), letters (Rapid Letter Naming (RLN)), and numbers (Rapid Number Naming (RNN)). The four RAN measures each have two test forms and are offered in grades K through 3."The study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67673>.

This document contains updated classifaction accuracy for Star Early Literacy.The study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67671>.

From the study: "The purpose of this report was to evaluate the Lalilo software program. Three research questions guided the current study.1. Do students in classrooms using Lalilo experience more growth in literacy skills relative to students in classrooms that do not use the program? Overall, students in schools that used Lalilo grew at a greater rate than students in schools that did not use Lalilo.2. Do classrooms that follow best practice guidelines for the program confer greater student growth relative to classrooms that do not? More specific measures of fidelity or usage benchmarks may shed light on the relationship between adherence to best practice guidelines and student growth in early literacy skills.3. To what degree is the intensity in which Lalilo is used (e.g., number of lessons completed / number of minutes program was used) related to the magnitude of growth in literacy skills amongst students in classrooms that use the program?Increasing the number of minutes or days spent using Lalilo was not critical to the improvement in weekly growth of early literacy skills. Instead increasing the number of learning objectives validated resulted in the largest improvements".Citation: Van Norman, E. R., & Forcht, E. R. (2024). An evaluation of the impact of the Lalilo software program: Research report prepared for Renaissance Learning. Center for Promoting Research to Practice, Lehigh University.The study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67557>.

From the abstract: "Renaissance contracted with LearnPlatform, a third-party edtech research company, to examine the impact of Freckle usage on student math outcomes. LearnPlatform designed the study to satisfy Level II requirements (Moderate Evidence) according to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)."The full study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67497>.

FastBridge CBMreading has been rated highly by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) as academic screening assessment. The Full Review is available online: <https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/ascreening>.

FastBridge Adaptive Math (aMath) has been rated highly by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) as academic screening assessment. The Full Review is available online: <https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/ascreening>.

FastBridge Adaptive Reading (aReading) has been rated highly by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) as academic screening assessment. The Full Review is available online: <https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/ascreening>.

FastBridge earlyMath Composite has been rated highly by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) as academic screening assessment. The Full Review is available online: <https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/ascreening>.