NEW YORK – June 4, 2025 – Newsela, a leading provider of high-quality instructional and assessment products for K-12, announced today that its Formative solution has been selected as winner of the “Test Prep Solution of the Year” award in the 7th annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by EdTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies and solutions in the global educational technology market.
Formative by Newsela connects daily instruction with district-wide assessments, giving educators the insights they need to inform teaching, learning, and decision-making at every level.
Formative supports daily learning and assessments—from bell ringers to benchmarks—with one platform for collaborative instruction, real-time assessment, shared insights, and purposeful AI tools. Educators can create and administer high-quality assessments with a standards-aligned item bank, over 20 technology-enhanced item types, and secure testing settings. Plus, AI-powered supports like item and activity generation help teachers save time and power independent student practice.
With Formative, teachers receive instant student response data, allowing them to adjust instruction in real-time. Administrators can track standards mastery across all assessments—by school, class, or student—with detailed reports that highlight trends and guide instructional planning. Formative also empowers administrators to promote collaboration among teachers and professional learning communities, making it simple to co-create assessments, share resources and data, and exchange best practices.
“When it comes to ‘test prep,’ people often think of rote practice, memorization, or ‘teaching to the test.’ With Formative, we’re focused on getting back to the core of why we assess: to guide and accelerate student growth. We know that timely feedback and high-quality insights are linked to better learning outcomes, and we designed Formative to enable teachers to provide targeted feedback to their students for each question answered—in real time,” said Pep Carrera, CEO at Newsela. “It’s an honor to accept this award from EdTech Breakthrough on behalf of Newsela. We’ll continue to put educators and students first in all of our solutions, and our incredible team will keep pushing forward on the path to meaningful classroom learning for every student.”
The mission of the EdTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work, and success in a range of educational technology categories, including Student Engagement, School Administration, Adaptive Learning, STEM Education, Remote Learning, Career Preparation, and many more. This year’s program attracted thousands of nominations from over 15 different countries worldwide.
“Formative makes the formative assessment process easier and more data-driven for both teachers and students. Testing should help students learn, not just evaluate them. Unfortunately, most classroom and district assessments operate in silos, existing in two different worlds, and causing both educators and the districts they work for to miss the full picture,” said Steve Johansson, managing director, EdTech Breakthrough. “By blending daily instruction and district-wide assessment into one platform, Formative by Newsela transforms testing into a powerful tool for learning—accelerating student growth, district-wide. That makes this incredible solution our choice for ‘Test Prep Solution of the Year!’”
About Newsela
Newsela products are purpose-built to unlock student motivation, inspire teachers, and drive long-lasting learning outcomes. With a suite of products to support knowledge- and skill-building, writing practice, daily instruction, and assessment in K-12 classrooms, Newsela offers solutions backed by learning science research to drive student outcomes and support teachers in their instructional goals. To learn more about Newsela, visit the company’s website.
About EdTech Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the EdTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in educational technology products, companies, and people. The EdTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough educational technology in categories including e-learning, student engagement, school administration, career preparation, language learning, STEM, and more. For more information, visit EdTechBreakthrough.com.
Tech Breakthrough LLC does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in our recognition programs, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with award designations. Tech Breakthrough LLC recognition consists of the opinions of the Tech Breakthrough LLC organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Tech Breakthrough LLC disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this recognition program, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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