TweenTribune alternatives for teachers
Smithsonian retired TweenTribune, and the part teachers relied on most is the part that went away. Here is what actually replaces it.
The closest replacements for TweenTribune are Newsreel Classroom for daily news at multiple reading levels with a quiz you can assign, DOGO News and ReadWorks for free leveled nonfiction, CommonLit for a free full reading curriculum, and Newsela for a leveled article library. Newsela and Newsreel are paid for the assignable versions; DOGO, ReadWorks, and CommonLit have genuinely free teacher tiers. Full disclosure: we built Newsreel, so we have kept the rest of this list factual.
What happened to TweenTribune
Smithsonian folded TweenTribune into its main magazine site. Visit tweentribune.com today and you land on Smithsonian's teachers page, where the notice reads that the content moved to a new educational resources page and that "educators will unfortunately no longer be able to assign content to students."
That last clause is the whole problem. Plenty of the articles survived. What did not survive is the thing that made TweenTribune a classroom tool rather than a magazine: student accounts, assignable articles at multiple Lexile levels, and the quiz attached to each one. If you only read TweenTribune for the writing, Smithsonian still has the writing. If you built a weekly routine on assigning a leveled article and seeing who answered the questions, you need a replacement.
What to look for in a replacement
TweenTribune did four things at once, and most alternatives do two or three. Work out which of these you actually used before you pick:
- The same article at several reading levels. This is what let one assignment work across a mixed class.
- A quiz attached to the article. Not a worksheet you build, a check that comes with the story.
- Assignable to students, with results you can see. The feature Smithsonian removed.
- Free. TweenTribune cost nothing, and that matters. Some replacements are free, some are not, and this page says which is which.
The alternatives
1. Newsreel Classroom
The closest match on features. Each day's news, written by vetted journalists, published at multiple reading levels with a quiz and a poll attached, assignable to students, with a dashboard showing who finished. That is the TweenTribune routine with current reporting behind it rather than an archive. It was named the 2025 Resource of the Year by the National Association for Media Literacy Education and is included in Generation Citizen's Digital Media Literacy Toolkit. The honest catch: TweenTribune was free and Newsreel is a paid school plan, and it starts at grade 6, so elementary teachers should look further down this list.
Best for: rebuilding the exact assign-a-leveled-article-with-a-quiz routine, grades 6 and up.
2. DOGO News
The nearest free equivalent for the tween age range TweenTribune was built for. Daily kid-friendly news with comprehension questions, and the article site itself is free and ad-supported with no login. A paid teacher tier adds assignment and class features. If you taught upper elementary or middle school, start here before you look at anything paid.
Best for: free daily news for grades 3-8, the closest age match to TweenTribune.
3. ReadWorks
Free, permanently, with nothing sold to schools at all. Nonfiction passages with question sets, assignable to students, and a genuine answer to the budget problem TweenTribune's shutdown created. The tradeoff is that it is a fixed library rather than today's news, so it replaces the leveled-reading half of TweenTribune and not the current-events half.
Best for: free assignable nonfiction reading when there is no budget at all.
4. CommonLit
A nonprofit reading platform whose free teacher tier is unusually generous, including the full core reading curriculum rather than a sample of it. Schools pay for assessment, dashboards, and rostering. Literature and nonfiction rather than news, so again it covers the reading-level need and not the daily-news need.
Best for: a free, deep reading library with real teacher tools attached.
5. Newsela
The best-known leveled-article library, and the name most often suggested to departing TweenTribune users. Its free Newsela Lite tier gives a rotating set of articles at five reading levels, but articles expire and the assignment and reporting features sit behind a school subscription that is quoted rather than published. Individual teachers cannot buy it on their own.
Best for: schools that already have a Newsela subscription or can start a district conversation.
6. CNN 10
A free ten-minute daily news video. It replaces the daily-news habit but none of the reading-level or quiz mechanics, since there is nothing to assign and nothing to grade. Useful as a bell ringer, not as a TweenTribune substitute on its own.
Best for: a free daily news routine when you do not need anything turned in.
7. TIME for Kids
A per-student classroom news magazine with a published price and a ten-copy minimum, print plus digital. The clearest fit for elementary classrooms that had been using TweenTribune's lower levels, and one of the few products in this category that tells you the price without a sales call.
Best for: elementary classrooms with a small budget and a set student count.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Reading levels | Quiz built in | Assignable | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newsreel Classroom | Yes | Yes | Yes | School plans |
| DOGO News | Limited | Yes | Paid tier | Free site |
| ReadWorks | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free |
| CommonLit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free teacher tier |
| Newsela | Yes | Paid tier | Paid tier | Freemium, quoted |
| CNN 10 | No | No | No | Free |
| TIME for Kids | Some | Yes | Yes | Per student |
Which one should you actually pick
If you have no budget, go ReadWorks or CommonLit for assignable leveled reading, and add CNN 10 or DOGO News for the daily news habit. If you teach grades 6 and up and can get a school plan, Newsreel Classroom rebuilds the whole TweenTribune routine with current reporting. If you teach elementary, DOGO News free or TIME for Kids paid are the closest age fits.
The uncomfortable part of this list is that TweenTribune was free and most of the products that match it feature for feature are not. That is not an accident. Smithsonian was subsidising a classroom tool out of a magazine budget, and when that stopped there was no business underneath it. Anything that publishes new leveled content daily and grades it has a cost, and the choice is really between a free fixed library and a paid daily one.
Rebuild the routine you lost
Today's news, written by vetted journalists, at multiple reading levels with a quiz and poll built in, and a dashboard showing who finished. Book a demo to see it in your classroom.
Explore Newsreel ClassroomFrequently asked questions
Is TweenTribune shut down?
The standalone site is retired. Tweentribune.com now redirects to Smithsonian Magazine's teachers page, and Smithsonian's own notice says the content moved to a new educational resources page and that educators can no longer assign content to students. The articles largely survive; the classroom features do not.
What is the closest free alternative to TweenTribune?
For the tween age range, DOGO News is the nearest free daily news site with comprehension questions. For assignable leveled reading with question sets, ReadWorks is free permanently and CommonLit's free teacher tier includes its full core curriculum. None of the three is a perfect match, because TweenTribune combined daily news with leveled assignable articles and most free tools do one or the other.
Which alternative has reading levels and quizzes like TweenTribune did?
Newsreel Classroom, ReadWorks, CommonLit, and Newsela all pair leveled text with question sets you can assign. Newsreel is the closest on the daily-news side because it publishes each day's reporting rather than drawing from a fixed archive. ReadWorks and CommonLit are the closest on price, since both are free.
Can I still read TweenTribune articles?
Much of the writing is still available through Smithsonian Magazine's educational resources and learning pages. What you cannot do any more is assign it to students at a chosen reading level and see their results, which for most teachers was the reason to use it.