What to Expect When You Downgrade to Newsela Lite (Free Account)

First off, thank you for using Newsela! We know you may have questions about what happens when your account is downgraded, and we would like to answer these questions for you.

First and foremost ALL of the assignments you created will remain in your account. You will still be able to see how many students completed the assignments, and access their responses to review and score. However, you will not be able to assign these assignments to other students. 

You will lose access to those assignments that were shared with you by other teachers if you were a co-teacher on their class(es).


All the saved content that you saved to your account on your own will continue to appear under the “Saved Content” tab, but the premium content that is not accessible via Newsela Lite will be “grayed out”. 

Any saved Newsela Lite content that is active and non expired will be available, and marked with a pill stating the expiration date. 

With the Newsela Lite experience, we offer 4 leveled news articles that have been hand-selected by Newsela staff for teachers to choose from at any given time. Each article will be available for 4 weeks before it expires and is replaced with another timely piece of news content. You will also have access to the data and information you need to make instructional decisions.

With Newsela Lite it is free for any teacher to:

  • Access 4 news articles selected by Newsela staff, offered at 5 reading levels. 

  • See alignment to state standards on articles

  • Create assignments for all active and non-expired articles

  • Schedule assignments and set due dates

  • Select and lock reading levels for students

  • Access students' quiz scores 

  • Customize and respond to students’ write prompt submissions and annotations

  • Integration with Formative is available to all users, regardless of subscription or plan type. You will continue to have access to your Formative account and will be able to assign formatives related to available and non-expired articles from your Newsela account. 

  • Connect to Google Classroom Newsela Lite account holders can continue to sync their classes with Google Classroom and utilize Google SSO, as long as Newsela has been configured as a trusted app in Google Classroom by their district.

Downgrading from a subscription to Newsela Lite, the following features will no longer be available:  

  • Downloading data

  • Printing functionality for premium content and expired lite content. 

  • Sharing Assignments - you will only be able to share assignment templates with teachers who have an active subscription. You will not be able to share assignments with teachers who have Newsela Lite

  • Binder experience - while you will still be able to access students’ scores and data on individual assignments, you will no longer have access to the aggregate view from the binder

  • Power Words

  • Text Sets / Collections - access and creation of Text Sets / Collections is not available with Newsela Lite, and they will be excluded from results in the browse window

  • Admin Console - Admins for Newsela subscriptions have access to an additional tab with team management features and additional data. Once accounts revert to Newsela Lite, the Admin Console will no longer be present. 

  • Auto Rostering and LMS Integrations - LMS integration through LTI is reserved for subscribed districts and bulk-rostering through OneRoster, ClassLink, or other systems will no longer be updated.

  • Dedicated Success Manager - If you received support and services from a Success Manager, you will be reverted back to our normal support level. Newsela Success Managers are former educators who are committed to making sure a Newsela subscription is successful, educators are trained, and Admins understand how to use our tool to monitor student growth. Newsela Success Managers offer ongoing training and professional development, and are available to respond to your requests and needs in a more personalized way if you continue under a school/district license.

Live chat support is available to subscribed users. As a Newsela Lite user, you will have 24/7 access to request assistance by submitting a support request here. Rest assured that as a Newsela user, you are a priority. We pride ourselves on our exceptionally low response time to support requests. With the exception of holidays, you can expect to hear from us same business day.

Newsela Professional Learning can be purchased as part of a school or district subscription. To advocate for premium Newsela access at your school, please refer us to your administrator by submitting a form here: https://go.newsela.com/Refer-Your-Administrator.html

In addition, we highly encourage you to complete our free, self-paced course and become a Newsela Certified Educator. This program will help you become a master Newsela user, and will grant you free trial of Newsela's premium products.

If your district renews the Newsela subscription, make sure your Newsela account uses a school email address and you’ll be able to access the subscription as well. If you would like to keep all of the features and services you've had access to thus far, your subscription must be renewed. 

If you are an admin, please reach out to your Success Manager to discuss renewal before the existing subscription expires to avoid loss of data and collaboration features, or submit a webform here . 

If you are a teacher, please refer your admin using this link.

If your district will not renew the subscription, you may be able to access a free trial by completing our Newsela Certified Educator course - click here to find out more about the course and the awarded trial.