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/>.

This study explores the impact of Accelerated Reader on student reading achievement and growth. Accelerated Reader is designed to motivate, monitor, and manage students' independent reading practice and support their stamina and skill growth through wide reading. Research-based guidelines, goal-setting features, and tools for matching students with appropriate texts promote dynamic reading practice that is shown to optimize academic growth. For this study, we drew upon a sample of over 1.8 million students from the 2023-2024 school year. The findings indicate that students using Accelerated Reader, particularly at recommended levels, showed significantly higher growth compared to non-users. Struggling readers and English Language Learners also benefited from Accelerated Reader. The study concludes that Accelerated Reader is an effective tool for boosting reading skills and closing achievement gaps, with higher fidelity in usage leading to better outcomes.The full report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R58148>.

To explore how myON use relates to progress in general reading ability, we drew upon a sample of 76,622 UK pupils from the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years. Results indicated that myON use was associated with improved student outcomes, and more frequent programme use was associated with accelerated academic progress.The research study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67912>.

This whitepaper introduces the Renaissance Star assessment Biliteracy Trajectories Project, The full whitepaper is aavailable online: <https://renaissance.widen.net/s/vtlslkjdns/809564-biliteracytrajectories-whitepaper>.

This large Freckle for Math study involved more than 250,000 students from Grades 3-5 and examined Freckle for Math usage and growth in general math ability (Star Student Growth Percentile) over the fall-to-spring period in the 2022-2023 school year. Students in grades 3-5 who used Freckle for Math at or above recommended levels experienced significantly greater growth than students using the program below recommended levels or not at all, particularly if the recommended usage spanned a larger portion of the school year. Using Freckle for Math at or above recommended usage levels promoted significantly greater growth among students in different educational settings (e.g., urban/suburban/rural, economically disadvantaged school classified as Title I), and among students using the program in small groups and large groups. Using Freckle for Math at or above recommended usage levels also promoted significantly greater growth for students of differing characteristics, including at risk students who struggle with math and English Language Learners.The full study is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R67897>.

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.)

This technical report details the statistical method behind the process of linking Texas' state test (STAAR Spanish) and Star Reading Spanish and Star Math Spanish Unified Scale Scores.The Full Report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R62044>.

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>.

To develop Pathway to Proficiency reports for Florida Star Reading and Star Math schools, we linked our scaled scores with the scaled scores from Florida's achievement test. This technical report details the statistical method behind the process of linking Florida's state test (FAST) and Star Reading and Star Math scaled scores. The full report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R45709>.