• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 17, 2021

With children’s learning in the spotlight given the challenges posed by the pandemic, educational tech platform Newsela is launching its first-ever campaign tackling learning loss. 

The theme is “learning found” which offers a different perspective on the debate about lost learning by school-aged children over the past year.  As plans and budgets for fall classrooms are being both reimagined and finalized, the campaign will target school district administrators (who are the actual customers), along with teachers and educators with a message to focus not on the learning that’s been lost, but on how to best re-engage students moving forward.  

The company asserts that the perceived “learning loss” problem is actually a student engagement problem that existed before the pandemic and will persist if not adequately addressed. The campaign positions Newsela as a solution or at least part of it. 

To help communicate the advantages of its interactive learning approach, Newsela partnered with creative agency Episode Four to create an 8-minute film that documents the difference between “skill” and “drill” programs and teacher-led classrooms powered by Newsela's instructional materials. 

The film goes live this month across paid, owned and earned media channels.  It will be accompanied by supporting materials, including a white paper, additional videos on Newsela’s landing page as well as a sponsorship with EdWeek, display and influencer outreach. 

in February Newslea announced that it had raised over $100 million in venture capital, with a valuation of $1 billion.  The app, which takes authentic, real-world content from trusted sources and makes it “instruction-ready” for K-12 classrooms, now boasts over 2.5 million teachers and 37 million students among its users.  

“We are very concerned that outdated structures of institutional learning will impede the realization of well-intentioned recovery plans,” said Dan Cogan-Drew co-founder and Chief Academic Officer of Newsela. “Teachers and students have gone through a grueling year. The last thing we should do is recreate learning environments that isolate students and feed them rote exercises with a catch-up mindset completely outside of the context of teacher-driven lessons.