For Immediate Release:
January 10, 2018

Ellevation Raises Over $10M to Improve Outcomes for English Learners

Infusion of capital by Reach Capital, Emerson Collective, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Omidyar Network will accelerate new product development focused on instruction and differentiation

Boston, MA - Ellevation announced today that it received over $10 million in a Series B funding to advance its mission of supporting English Language Learners (ELLs) achieve their highest aspirations. The round, led by Reach Capital with participation from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, and other existing investors, will enable Ellevation to invest in additional product development focused on instruction and differentiation.

“Administrators and teachers are working hard to meet the instructional needs of our nation’s fastest growing population of students,” says Jordan Meranus, CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevation. “We are privileged to support the critical work they do and greatly appreciate the support from mission-aligned investors that care deeply about English Language Learners.”

In the past year, Ellevation has a achieved a number of important milestones:

• Nearly 100,000 educators in over 600 school districts, from Fairbanks, AK to Miami, FL, now use Ellevation, collectively impacting over 1 million ELLs.  

• Ellevation created an instructional advisory board that includes top language acquisition researchers, academics, and practitioners to ensure that Ellevation develops solutions that support educators in their work to help children acquire language across content areas.

• The number of full-time employees has grown to 100, with offices in Texas, California and Massachusetts. The company recently received Boston Tech in Motion’s 2017 award for Best Tech Workplace for Diversity.

“The way in which Ellevation has methodically grown their footprint and innovated on product, while staying close to their customers, is the right approach for becoming an iconic education company,” says Jennifer Carolan, Founder of Reach Capital. “I appreciate how hard this team works on behalf of schools, educators and children. The result is a best in class product that our educators and children deserve.”

ELLs are the fastest growing population of K-12 students in the United States, comprising  nearly 5 million students across U.S. public schools. About 1 in every 10 students across the country right now is learning to speak English; in California, ELLs represent every one in four students. Several districts on the west coast, including Moreno Valley School District, have found that Ellevation can dramatically streamline their work while providing the instructional guidance needed to better serve this growing population of students.  

“Ellevation has allowed our department to have a huge impact on teachers and students across the district,” said Martha Cepeda-Medina, Coordinator of the EL Program at Moreno Valley Unified School District. “We’ve streamlined student monitoring, which allows us to process over 20,000 RFEP forms annually, and saved a significant amount of time while having more insight than ever into student growth in both language acquisition and content knowledge.”

Historically, ELLs have lagged behind their English proficient peers, but Ellevation is helping school districts reverse that trend.   

“I have had students this year who have come along so much faster than ELLs that I’ve had in previous years,” says Patricia Martinez, a kindergarten teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas. “They are growing, and I honestly believe it’s because we’re using Ellevation that is getting them talking - not just to me, but to other kids.”

About Ellevation

Ellevation is a software company focused exclusively on English Learners and the educators who serve them. The data management, compliance and instructional platform is used by nearly 600 school districts to streamline program management, enable effective collaboration among all stakeholders in a district, and to differentiate and improve instruction. Districts using Ellevation spend less time trying to satisfy compliance-heavy administrative requirements and more time focused on delivering the instruction students need to realize their highest aspirations.

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Media Contact: Chris Strausser, VP of Marketing, chriss@ellevationeducation.com, 617-307-5765