Benchmark Education Company Wins Two Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence for 2023

NEW ROCHELLE, NY, Feb. 2, 2024— Leading educational publisher Benchmark Education Company (BEC) is pleased to announce that that it has received two awards in the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2023, which were announced today. Both awards were in the “Primary Education” category, with one going to the English Language Development program, Express! Asset-Based Access to English, and the other to BEC’s grab-and-go phonics solution, StartUp BuildUp SpiralUp Phonics.

The Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence recognize the best products in the education technology industry from the last 12 months, honoring those that significantly aid education professionals and/or students. Each product is judged based on its feature set, innovation, perceived value, and ease of use. Expert judges evaluated hundreds of nominations, with each nominee required to answer the following questions: “What specific problem does this product solve?”; “How did your product exceptionally support teaching and learning in 2023?”; and “How does your product address the challenges facing education today?”

BEC’s Express! Asset-Based Access to English is an English Language Development program for Grades K-6 that provides appropriate, differentiated instruction to support multilingual learners and foster language proficiency. The judges noted that the product’s asset-based approach leverages students' first-language knowledge for a robust foundation in grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills. They also cited the product’s use of highly scaffolded and visually supportive practices, which ensures that students acquire essential skills for accessing complex texts. “This is a good product,” the judges wrote.

StartUp BuildUp SpiralUp Phonics provides explicit, systematic phonics lessons with spiral review for Grades K-2+ and features decodable readers developed by trade book editors. The judges noted that the solution’s small-group instruction is both effective and efficient, and that its assessments and flexible pacing allow teachers to pinpoint individual needs and accelerate as student’s progress. “Overall,” the judges wrote, “this is a very well thought-out and researched solution with a price point that districts can afford.”

“2023 will surely be remembered as ‘the year of AI,’” Tech & Learning Content Director Christine Weiser said in a statement congratulating all of the winners. “But there were plenty of examples of products that integrated a variety of innovative technology to help to improve teaching and learning.”

“We’re thrilled to have won these two awards,” BEC founder and CEO Tom Reycraft said. “It has always been our core mission to support both educators and students so they can grow and achieve. These awards affirm that through our commitment to quality and our dedication to innovation, we are fulfilling that mission.”

ABOUT BENCHMARK EDUCATION COMPANY

Benchmark Education Company (BEC) is a leading publisher of core, supplemental, and intervention literacy and language resources in English and Spanish, with valid and reliable digital assessments that inform instruction. BEC is also a provider of exceptional professional development to educators.

BEC is recognized as a responsive publisher that offers equally rigorous and engaging digital, print, and hybrid learning materials grounded in the Science of Reading research. BEC monitors research outcomes carefully to create effective foundational resources that include strong decoding materials with systematic and explicit instruction and high-quality resources focused on language development and comprehension. BEC’s content-rich and authentic texts offer instruction in close reading and analysis, multiple perspectives, and authentic literature while building world knowledge and reflecting the individuality of every student in each diverse classroom.

Family owned and operated for more than 25 years, BEC is committed to partnering with educators to provide the best for all students through resources of exceptional quality, worldclass professional learning, and effective and dedicated customer support.