Award-Winning Digital Literacy Platform Usage Also Surpasses 100 School Mark
NEW YORK, June 4, 2014 – LightSail Education, a provider of K-12 digital literacy solutions, today announced that it has raised another $1 million from Serious Change as well as existing investors. Since November 2013, LightSail has sold its adaptive digital literacy platform to more than 100 schools throughout New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, DC. LightSail has now raised $5 million.
“Rather than focus on the freemium approach of so many in ed tech, we decided to charge for LightSail from the start. Given that we have access to the best publishers, developed patent-pending technology to embed progress monitoring assessments right into the books and provide real-time actionable data to teachers and administrators, we are fortunate to have something that schools really want,” said Gideon Stein, founder and CEO of LightSail Education. “Adding to demand is the fact that we are seeing early, impressive proficiency gains by students across the board, including many of whom are at-risk.”
Stein further commented, “LightSail Education set an initial goal to close the literacy achievement gap by recovering 1.5 years of growth in a single year. But early indications show we’re tracking closer to double the improvement rate for that same time period. Those are breakthrough numbers for everyone – from teachers and administrators to parents and kids.”
LightSail Education holds strategic partnerships with companies such as MetaMetrics as well as Baker & Taylor, an alliance that provides teachers and students with 400,000+ titles of the highest quality content. Access to these works allows students to choose books that interest them and are at precisely their level. For teachers, LightSail monitors individual student progress, reading behaviors and comprehension. These embedded assessments provide real-time feedback so teachers can instruct in-the-moment of learning. LightSail constantly updates students’ Lexile measurements and presents more complex texts as they grow to advance them to the next level of comprehension.
About LightSail Education
LightSail is the adaptive reading platform that helps students, classrooms, and school districts exceed their literacy goals. LightSail students get access to personalized libraries filled with thousands of engaging, just-right texts to choose from. Our award-winning solution embeds in-text assessments that motivate students to increase the volume of their reading along with the difficulty of the texts they choose. LightSail teachers get real-time access to meaningful data about student reading behavior, comprehension, and growth so they can provide the necessary guidance to enhance learning and encourage a love of reading.
Posted on 6.Jun.14 in News
