Around the world, millions of students progress through school without learning to read, write, or do basic math. In many classrooms, large class sizes force students with widely varying skill levels to learn at the same pace. When learners fall behind, they rarely catch up—leading to persistent learning gaps and limited life opportunities. Teachers and education systems also lack timely, practical assessment data, making it difficult to deliver targeted support at scale.
Tangerine was created to address this need, born out of firsthand experience working in low‑resource and remote contexts. In 2011, while leading early grade reading assessments as part of an RTI International project, we were overwhelmed by paper‑based data collection—grappling with illegible forms, missing data, and long delays before results were available. The process was slow, outdated, and error‑prone, and the data arrived too late to inform instruction, coaching, or decision‑making. We knew there had to be a better way.
That experience led to the creation of Tangerine: an open‑source, offline‑first platform designed to support education quality data collection—even where connectivity and infrastructure are limited. What began as a tool for early grade reading assessment has evolved into a flexible, modular platform supporting literacy, numeracy, social‑emotional learning, disability screening, and more.
In 2025, we spun out Tangerine from RTI to Tangerine Central, a women-owned social enterprise.
This example describes Tangerine:Teach, the teacher facing version of the Tangerine platform, used to support remediation and progress monitoring in classrooms.
In Tanzania’s Reading Recovery Activity, teachers use Tangerine:Teach to run catch up classes for Standard 2 learners struggling with foundational reading skills. Teachers conduct short, one on one assessments focused on key reading building blocks such as letter recognition, syllable decoding, and word reading. Tangerine:Teach works fully offline and stores results directly on the tablet, making it suitable for low connectivity settings.
Based on assessment results, learners are automatically placed into skill based groups, allowing teachers to easily manage differentiation. During daily sessions, teachers use Tangerine:Teach to record attendance, run brief micro assessments, and track learner participation. Learners advance only after demonstrating mastery—typically scoring 80% or higher—and group placement is updated automatically.
Tangerine:Teach also supports instruction. Teachers access clear guidance on lesson activities for each group, including play based literacy games, pacing tips, and demonstration videos. Teachers use these records to decide whom to support individually and to show parents concrete evidence of progress.
At system level, data synced periodically to dashboards used by head teachers, instructional coaches, and district teams, enabling timely monitoring and support at scale.
Tangerine has spread gradually through sustained use, adaptation, and trust built with education systems over more than a decade. The platform was initially developed in 2011 to support early grade reading and mathematics assessment in low‑resource settings, where paper‑based tools were slow, error‑prone, and poorly suited to classroom realities. Early uptake occurred through research projects and government‑led assessments, where Tangerine demonstrated clear advantages in speed, data quality, and usability.
As demand grew, Tangerine evolved from a project‑based tool into a shared platform. In 2017, it began to be offered as a subscription service, enabling ministries of education, NGOs, and research organizations to use the platform more independently, with stable hosting, training, and technical support. This shift supported wider adoption while preserving the platform’s open‑source foundation and flexibility for local customization.
Since then, Tangerine has spread primarily through peer learning, partnerships, and direct integration into national and subnational education programs. It has now been used by more than 80 organizations across 65 countries. Users have adapted Tangerine for classroom assessment, instructional coaching, social‑emotional learning, disability screening, and large‑scale surveys. The innovation continues to spread through long‑term government partnerships, donor‑supported initiatives, and practitioner networks.
Tangerine has been modified and expanded over time in response to how educators and education systems use data in practice. We began in 2011 with Tangerine to replace paper based education assessments and surveys in low resource settings. Early use focused on large scale learning assessments, where faster, higher quality data was essential.
As adoption grew, it became clear that different users needed purpose built tools. Teachers required support for everyday classroom decision making, while instructional coaches needed structured ways to observe, guide, and support teaching. In response, we developed Tangerine:Teach, a teacher facing version that supports formative assessment, attendance tracking, skill based grouping, and access to instructional guidance. We also introduced Tangerine:Coach, designed for instructional coaches to conduct observations, provide feedback, and monitor progress using real time data.
In parallel, we added specialized assessment tools built on the same core platform, including EF:Touch for assessing executive function and Tangerine:Acuity for vision screening. Each addition responded to a specific educational need while preserving Tangerine’s core principles of offline functionality, flexibility, and data ownership.
Together, these modifications have transformed Tangerine from a single assessment tool into a flexible, modular ecosystem, with purpose built versions for different roles.
The simplest option is to start a free trial through Tangerine Central, which provides a hosted, ready‑to‑use version of the platform. A free trial allows you to explore Tangerine’s core features, build assessments, and test products such as Tangerine:Teach or Tangerine:Coach without setting up or maintaining your own server. This option is ideal for organizations that want to focus on implementation rather than technical infrastructure. Learn more at: https://www.tangerinecentral.org/get-tangerine
If your organization has in‑house technical capacity, you can also use Tangerine as open‑source software. The source code is publicly available, allowing you to host and customize the platform on your own servers while maintaining full control over your data.
Once you have access, new users are encouraged to take advantage of online training through the Tangerine Academy, including Quick Start and data collection courses that guide users through creating, deploying, and managing assessments. User guides and documentation are also available to support onboarding.
You can explore different products within the Tangerine suite—such as the core Tangerine platform for assessments and surveys, Tangerine:Teach for classroom‑based formative assessment, or Tangerine:Coach for instructional observation—and choose what best fits your context. For additional support, you can contact the Tangerine Central team directly through the website.
