Unrivaled Commitment to Student Representation
Our ELA programs incorporate a wider range of student identities, languages, backgrounds, and abilities than any other core or supplemental publisher. We strive to increase student representation with each program or series we develop.
In collaboration with authors, illustrators, educators, and consultants from around the country and the world, we aim to create high-interest, culturally inclusive, and authentic literary and informational texts that allow students to see and hear themselves on the page.
Among our primary goals in creating student materials—and the instructional resources that accompany them—are to offer educators the opportunity to:
- Engage students with resources that widen perspectives and expand students’ understanding of themselves and their world.
- Build content-area concept knowledge and essential literacy skills.
- Create in-school contexts for students to share their voices and visions through reading, writing, and speaking.
- Choose texts that speak to students’ multiple identities, instead of selecting texts based on their reading identities alone.
- Scaffold ways for students to share their thoughts and respond to texts
Representation in Children’s Books
A Comparison of Children’s Books Reviewed by Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) in 2021 and Books Published by Benchmark Education Company in 2021-2022
| By | 64% | 10% | 1% | 15% | 10% | 1% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| About | 66% | 14% | 2% | 11% | 7% | 1% |
| By | 27% | 20% | 5% | 23% | 15% | 11% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| About | 34% | 38% | 6% | 14% | 14% | 4% |
By = At least one of the creators (e.g., author, illustrator) are BIPOC.
About = If the main character or subject is Black, Indigenous and/or a Person of Color (BIPOC).
Books Received at CCBC = 3183*
by Voluntary Submmission (US Pubs) 2021
