Students Read the Most Coast to Coast and Set New Nationwide Record

WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis., March 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- If the Olympics had a challenge for reading practice, America's students would be gold medal winners! K-12 students read nearly 5 million books to set a new record during Renaissance Learning's "Read the Most Coast to Coast" event held February 28.

The annual event challenges students to engage in valuable reading practice and top the record for the number of Accelerated Reader Quizzes taken in one day. This year, which marked the 3^rd annual reading practice challenge, students were challenged to top last year's one-day record of 4,409,662 Accelerated Reader Quizzes. Students met the challenge, taking a grand total of 4,987,949 quizzes. Renaissance Learning tracked the quizzes on its hosted database and shared results on a live counter.

Accelerated Reader, the nation's most widely used reading management program, provides access to more than 160,000 quizzes, nearly half for nonfiction books. Students read a book at the appropriate level to facilitate growth and then take a computer-based quiz to show they understood what they read.

"The incredible participation in this event shows how technology provides exciting new ways for educators to engage and motivate students," said Jack Lynch, CEO of Renaissance Learning. "Reading practice is so important, not only to help students develop a love of reading, but to help assure they gain the background knowledge and skills for college and career readiness. Accelerated Reader provides immediate feedback and real-time data, giving teachers the insight they need to move students forward."

Accelerated Reader, which serves as the largest single database of book reading behavior, tracks all aspects of student reading including titles of books read, total number of books and words read, quiz scores, and book readability levels. The database contains records for more than 7.6 million students and is the source of What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools. The 2014 report will be released this spring.

The 31,000 educators who took part in Read the Most Coast to Coast this year were eligible to receive prizes in random drawings held throughout the day. In addition to sets of books donated by publishers, this year's prizes included books signed by award-winning authors Louis Sachar, Gary Paulsen, Rick Riordan and Doreen Cronin.

About Renaissance Learning

Renaissance Learning is a leading provider of cloud-based assessment, teaching and learning solutions that fit the K12 classroom, raise the level of school performance and accelerate learning for all. By delivering deep insight into what students know, what they like and how they learn, Renaissance Learning enables educators to deliver highly differentiated and timely instruction while driving personalized student practice in reading, writing and math every day. Renaissance Learning leverages top researchers, educators, content-area experts, data scientists and technologists within a rigorous development and calibration process to deliver and continuously improve its offerings for subscribers in over one-third of U.S. schools and more than 60 countries around the world.  

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SOURCE Renaissance Learning