How Does ReadWorks Create High-Quality Texts for Reading Comprehension?

“ReadWorks provides high-quality and diverse texts in a similar format to our online state assessment. This practice in reading, comprehension, and test-taking strategies is an invaluable resource for all of my students.” - Sarah, Teacher, Arizona ​

“I love the ability to find high-quality reading materials that can be printed or accessed online. It is a great service.” - Jacki, Teacher, Vermont ​

“High-quality” comes up a lot when talking about ReadWorks. It is especially important to call out because high-quality and free don’t usually go hand-in-hand. But our skilled team of content writers and partners spend countless hours thinking deeply about the needs of all students and how best to create our free texts, tools, and resources that promote a love of and confidence in reading, analyzing, and comprehending.

A key part of this is ensuring the quality of the materials that make it into our library. We follow an in-depth process behind the scenes to ensure the excellence of ReadWorks’ online library.

A ReadWorks text goes through several rounds of review before it is published. Before publication, our content team reviews factual accuracy, grade-appropriateness of the content, the flow of the language, grammar, and image sourcing. From the initial conception to writing, editing, sensitivity review, and fact-checking, it may take weeks, and in some cases, months, for a new article to pass through the sequence of review — even before the curricular supports are created. 

Once an article is ready for prime time, we create the curricular supports you know and love - including our research-based question sets, vocabulary activities, and human-voice audio - each of which undergoes its own process of quality review and approval. The process of ensuring a high-quality text doesn't just end at publication, but it's ongoing and dynamic. The texts go through yearly reviews to keep our content up to date.
Reading research shows that building background knowledge helps students become better readers. We also know that there’s no substitute for reading texts from expert and diverse voices. For these reasons, we work with learning and content partners to bring articles spanning a wide range of topics from subject matter experts and diverse authors to teachers and students. In our library, you will find articles written by conservation experts from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, science educators from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, historians and history educators from the New-York Historical Society, art educators from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, International Quilt Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. We also have many authors from a variety of culturally diverse backgrounds who write fiction texts based on their lived experiences.

Our trusted, high-quality, culturally diverse, and relevant library makes an impact across all communities, socioeconomic levels, and cultures. We are thrilled to be making differentiated instruction and personalized learning feasible for teachers to create a joyful and successful reading experience for every student. 

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Written by:
Manjula Raman, Senior Director of Content & Curriculum / Senior DEI Coordinator
Melissa Calder, Director of Marketing & Engagement
Nathalie Karimian, Ed.D., Content & Curricular Supports Developer
Susanne Nobles, Ph.D., Chief Academic Officer