Why You'll Love This Role:
As an Assessment Item Specialist for Social Studies, you will play a key role in expanding the Newsela Item Bank, ensuring students have access to high-quality, inquiry-based assessments. You will leverage your Social Studies expertise to create rigorous, standards-aligned content and evaluate primary and secondary sources that help educators deliver data-informed instruction. This role offers a collaborative, remote environment where your commitment to historical thinking and evidence-based analysis directly supports academic success in classrooms nationwide. You will enjoy the flexibility of a freelance contract while contributing to a platform that is a staple in K-12 digital learning.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Create original, standards-aligned Social Studies assessment items, tasks, and stimuli that are precisely mapped to state-specific standards and the C3 Framework.
- Select and curate high-quality primary and secondary sources, including maps, charts, and historical documents, that meet specific grade-level complexity and inquiry requirements.
- Transfer and format existing Social Studies assessments and items from district and state sources directly into the Formative platform.
- Produce and configure technology-enhanced items (TEIs) within the platform, ensuring accurate metadata tagging and flawless technical functionality.
- Conduct systematic quality assurance reviews of Social Studies content to ensure all items are unbiased, culturally responsive, and meet strict editorial standards.
- Validate content alignment and cognitive rigor by accurately evaluating the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) for every assessment item.
- Provide expert platform feedback and recommendations regarding content tools and item bank features to continuously improve development workflows.
About You:
- You are a professional assessment author with at least one year of direct experience writing and reviewing Social Studies assessment items on a commercial scale, such as for a reputable EdTech company, testing vendor, or educational publisher.
- You are an assessment methodology expert who possesses a comprehensive understanding of educational assessment design, including formative, common, and summative assessments.
- You are a standards and framework specialist with deep familiarity with state-specific social studies standards and the C3 Framework, along with a proven ability to apply strict standards alignment principles.
- You demonstrate a mastery of rigor and Depth of Knowledge (DOK), allowing you to accurately classify and create items that meet specific cognitive rigor requirements, particularly in evaluating historical evidence and civic reasoning.
- You are skilled in technical item production, bringing prior experience authoring technology-enhanced items (TEIs) and comfortably navigating digital assessment platforms.
- You exhibit editorial excellence through a thorough grasp of established style guides and best practices, including critical quality control elements such as fairness, bias, and accessibility.
- You are a reliable content producer with a proven track record of delivering high-quality work under tight deadlines with meticulous attention to detail.
- Legally authorized to work in the US.
Why you’ll love working at Newsela:
- Work From Home: We are a fully remote company!
- Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.
About Newsela:
Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, ’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.
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