Ed Tech News

Freckle Acquired by Renaissance Learning

• By David Nagel
• 05/20/19

Renaissance Learning has acquired ed tech provider Freckle Education (formerly known as Front Row Education).

Freckle is the developer of a differentiated instruction platform of the same name, focused on math, social studies, science and English language arts. According to Renaissance, Freckle serves some 700,000 teachers in 75,000 schools, up by about 14,000 schools since this time last year.

“We chose Freckle for its innovative approach to student-centered practice, instructional design and teacher tools,” said Todd Brekhus, chief product officer at Renaissance, in a prepared statement. “So many personalized learning programs suggest students should just put the headphones on, let the computer take over and wait for the learning to happen without the teacher’s involvement. With Freckle, we’re bringing educators a tool that puts them in control of targeting instruction and differentiating practice for students. The acquisition of Freckle is another step forward in our mission to continually extend and expand the impact of our solutions.”

Renaissance Learning is the developer of numerous preK-12 educational solutions, including Star 360, Star Early Literacy, MyON, Accelerated Reader, Accelerated Math and many others.

“We know that, when we combine best-in-class solutions, it can have an incredible effect on student learning,” said Renaissance CEO Chris Bauleke, also in a prepared statement. “When we introduced teachers and administrators to myON, we saw increased usage of both Accelerated Reader and myON and, more to the point, an increase in student reading. We believe the same thing will happen as educators work with Star Math, Accelerated Math and Freckle, combining powerful tools for uncovering student data and the resources to put those insights to work to strengthen student math learning.”

According to Renaissance, Freckle customers will “continue to receive the support and service they have come to expect and love from the company. Existing Renaissance customers can look forward to being introduced to Freckle.”

“We launched Freckle because we believe every student deserves a world-class education, and the best way to deliver that is by empowering teachers to differentiate instruction for their students,” said Sidharth Kakkar, Freckle co-founder and CEO. “We’ve been honored to help hundreds of thousands of educators all across the country, and we couldn’t be more excited to see Freckle improve learning for so many more students with the expanded reach Renaissance will provide.”