Renaissance Accelerated Reader vs. Clever

Renaissance Accelerated Reader is an independent reading practice program that helps K–12 students become confident, lifelong readers. Supporting more than 210,000 fiction and nonfiction books at a wide range of levels, Accelerated Reader gives students extensive choice in what they read—and keeps them engaged in independent reading practice as they work toward personalized goals. Quizzes for Spanish titles help meet the needs of emergent bilingual learners, while in-depth reporting supports regular teacher-student conversations about reading time, reading comprehension, and reading growth.

Clever was born of co-founder Dan Carroll’s frustration as a school tech director in Denver. His plans to use technology to save teachers time and personalize learning were stymied by countless CSV files and forgotten passwords. Dan recalls, “I wanted to be an innovator, but I got stuck being a human API.” Software has the potential to empower teachers and create new ways to learn. But one thing must happen first. Everyone must be able to log in—quickly and securely. To solve Dan’s problem, we built a single sign-on portal that now helps 95,000 of U.S.