News Literacy Project

The Problem

The US is facing a reality crisis as algorithmic social media and generative AI have converged, transforming disinformation into a defining structural feature of adolescence. Today, false narratives travel six times faster online than factual content. Teenagers, who spend an average of up to six hours a day on algorithmic feeds, are especially vulnerable. This vulnerability is compounded by the critical “news literacy gap” that threatens to leave young people without the cognitive tools needed to navigate information manipulation. As technology evolves and new threats emerge, current educational interventions are stifled by instructional lags, a lack of standardization on the topic, and an absence of engaging curricula — leaving the responsibility to overworked school teachers and underfunded administrators. The result is an urgent, unmet need for a scalable, politically neutral news literacy solution that supports students where they “live”, both online and on-device, to restore civic trust and protect the cognitive well-being of the next generation.

The Solution

The News Literacy Project is bridging the gap between news literacy awareness and classroom implementation through their innovative solution, Checkology®, an e-learning platform that transforms passive lessons into an interactive experience for students. Checkology’s suite of expert-led video lessons, infographics, and classroom activities teaches fifth through twelfth-grade students to identify credible sources, evaluate bias, and deconstruct AI-generated content. The platform offers over 250 resources for educators to integrate into their classes without requiring a separate course. Checkology is modular and updatable, with content continually refreshed in response to emerging threats such as generative AI, deepfakes, and new misinformation tactics. It also addresses misinformation beyond news sources, including on social media and other popular content platforms. Checkology helps students cultivate necessary critical thinking skills across five key standards, including the First Amendment, information verification and analysis, and civic participation.

NLP also fosters news literacy instruction at scale through district and state-level initiatives. Their District Fellowship program provides three-year funding to cohorts of district educators and administrators nationwide and supports them in designing and implementing standardized, guaranteed news literacy education for their students before high school graduation. Simultaneously, NLP mobilizes state coalitions and serves as a subject-matter expert to facilitate state-level news literacy teaching requirements.

NLP will continue to scale through these three levels of engagement: educators, districts, and states. By 2028, NLP aims to reach 3.5 million students with NLP resources on Checkology and guarantee news literacy instruction before high school graduation for 2.5 million students through state and district initiatives.

Impact

As of April 2026, more than 2.3 million students have been taught news literacy skills using NLP resources (since 2016).

In the 2024-2025 school year, 15,800 educators in 4,800 school districts taught over 574,000 students using NLP resources and, after using Checkology, students’ ability to identify credible evidence improved by 23 percentage points (from before using Checkology).