For schools

What does it cost?

No, Pero Why? is free to use, and there is nothing to buy. That includes the cases, the student and educator editions, the bellringers, the anchor charts and the slides.

Do students need accounts, and what happens to their work?

Students do not create accounts or sign in. The cases do not ask for names, email addresses or school records.

What students type in a case stays in the browser on their device. It is not sent to us, and we do not store it. Some drafts clear when the tab closes; others stay in that browser until someone clears them. On a shared computer, clear the browser’s saved data for this site at the end of class.

The Ask page is separate from the cases. It saves a question as a file on the device. It does not send anything to us.

The site’s code does not include advertising or analytics trackers. Optional videos from YouTube, TikTok or Wistia load only when someone chooses to play them, and those services then receive technical information under their own policies. Like any website, our hosting provider processes technical information, such as IP addresses, to serve and protect the site.

Read the full privacy page, and check your district’s own rules for using outside websites.

Is it accessible?

We design the site to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. That means text descriptions for images, menus and buttons that work with a keyboard, visible focus, color contrast checks and layouts that fit a phone screen. The site follows the device’s reduced-motion setting.

No independent accessibility audit has been done yet. Every case also works on paper, and no case requires a video. If something on the site blocks a student, tell us what happened and on which page.

Does it take political sides?

No. The cases teach students how to check evidence, read a rule and find out who decides. They do not tell students what to believe, which side to take or whom to vote for.

Every news story, law, research study and ethics code a case cites is named with its publisher and date. Posting publicly, creating an outside account and taking political action are never required to complete a case.

What research is the approach based on?

The source-checking steps in the cases build on research about how professional fact checkers judge online information. These researchers and organizations have not reviewed or endorsed No, Pero Why?. We have not measured learning results for No, Pero Why? itself; the studies below tested other lessons that teach the same skills.

1. Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, “Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information,” Teachers College Record 121, no. 11 (2019). Read the source

   What it found: The researchers asked 10 professional fact checkers, 10 historians with Ph.D.s and 25 Stanford University undergraduates to think aloud while they judged live websites. The fact checkers read laterally: they left a site after a quick look and opened new tabs to judge whether the first site could be trusted. They reached better-supported conclusions in a fraction of the time.

   How the cases use it: Lessons 1 and 20 ask students to leave the post and find the original before they decide what it shows.

2. Sam Wineburg, Joel Breakstone, Sarah McGrew, Mark D. Smith and Teresa Ortega, “Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes,” Journal of Educational Psychology 114, no. 5 (July 2022): 893–909. Read the source

   What it found: High school teachers across one urban district taught six 50-minute lessons on lateral reading in a required government course. Compared with 228 students in regular classrooms, the 271 students who had the lessons grew significantly in their ability to judge the credibility of digital content.

   How the cases use it: Lessons 1, 7, 9 and 20 practice the same habit: before trusting a post, check who made it and what other sources say.

3. Mike Caulfield, “SIFT (The Four Moves),” Hapgood, June 19, 2019. Read the source

   What it found: Caulfield names four moves for checking online information: Stop; Investigate the source; Find better coverage; Trace claims, quotes and media back to the original context.

   How the cases use it: One of our anchor charts adapts these four moves and credits Caulfield.

4. Digital Inquiry Group, Civic Online Reasoning curriculum, checked September 25, 2026. Read the source

   What it found: The Civic Online Reasoning curriculum provides free lessons and assessments for teaching students to evaluate online information.

   How the cases use it: Educators who want more practice with lateral reading can pair our cases with these free lessons.

Which standards does it cover?

Each case lists Common Core codes by grade and course versions for AP, Pre-AP, IB and Honors classes. See the standards alignment for every case. Each educator guide also lists the C3 Framework indicators for that case.

The College and community tasks name the AAC&U VALUE rubrics and the frames of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education that each task practices.

AP, Pre-AP and IB activities are practice designed by No, Pero Why?. They are not official College Board or IB materials. Honors expectations are set by your school. College tasks are practice designed by No, Pero Why?. They are not official materials from AAC&U, ACRL or any college, and no college has reviewed them.

Can I post a case in my learning management system?

Yes. Every case, bellringer and book has its own web address. Copy the address from your browser and post it as a link in Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology or any system that accepts links. PDFs can be uploaded as files.

There is no app to install, no LTI connection and no grade sync. Students do the work on the page or on paper and turn it in the way your class usually does.

How do I contact you?

The Ask page helps you write a question or a correction and save it as a file. It does not send it to us yet, so we cannot reply through it.