Discovery Education this month acquired DreamBox Learning, a PK-12 education technology provider serving more than 6 million students and 600,000 educators nationwide. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, DreamBox Learning offers the only dual-discipline solution rated “Strong” by Johns Hopkins University’s evidenceforESSA.org in both mathematics and reading. Through its adaptive learning solutions independently proven to accelerate student growth, DreamBox Learning empowers educators with data analytics and content-specific professional development solutions to complement instruction.
DreamBox Learning’s products complement Discovery Education’s other digital solutions, which include Discovery Education Experience, the company’s award-winning K-12 platform, the Techbook series of digital textbooks, Mystery Science, and more, in supporting student achievement. The acquisition of DreamBox Learning comes at a time when school districts are seeking comprehensive, yet consolidated platforms to address a wide range of core and supplemental learning needs, backed by research that underscores meaningful gains in achievement. The addition of DreamBox Learning’s intelligent adaptive learning technology to the Discovery Education suite will provide educators and students with more options for engaging, personalized learning experiences across a variety of disciplines.
DreamBox Learning will be Discovery Education’s most recent acquisition, joining Pivot Interactives and DoodleLearning, which were acquired in August of 2022, and Mystery Science, which was acquired in 2020.
SchoolStatus, announced this month the acquisition of ClassTag, a unified family communication and engagement platform for educators, schools, and districts. This strategic acquisition expands SchoolStatus’ current offerings with a robust communications app that enables sharing of essential student-level data in streamlined and easy-to-use ways. ClassTag’s smart messages reach all families based on their preferred channel (SMS, email, app, web or paper) automatically translated into 100+ languages. Seeing all relevant student information in one place helps families stay informed and get involved.
Based in New York, ClassTag is a unified family engagement platform used by over 5 million families. The platform enables teachers to efficiently communicate and coordinate with families and provides school and district leaders with insights on effective ways to build school-home connections that improve student outcomes.
SchoolStatus will acquire ClassTag in its entirety, including its operations and technology. ClassTag basic free users will continue to have access to the same great products and services they currently use. The technology will be seamlessly integrated to expand and enhance SchoolStatus’ current data and school-home communications platform, promising an even more user-friendly family-teacher communications experience.
The acquisition rounds out SchoolStatus’ suite of communication solutions, meeting the evolving needs of educators, schools, districts and families to cover the full spectrum of school-home communication. SchoolStatus currently offers options for two-way texting, phone calls, print letters, and email. Integrating ClassTag’s technology will add a mobile app for families as an additional option for SchoolStatus partners. Together with Smore‘s newsletter capabilities and Operoo‘s digital forms and workflow automation, the acquisition of ClassTag will enable SchoolStatus to offer more options for school districts to reach every family through their preferred channel.
Carnegie Learning, a leader in AI-driven technology, curriculum, and professional learning solutions for K-12 education, announced this month that the company has reached a new milestone: providing over 72,000 high-dosage live virtual tutoring sessions, serving over 13,000 students. Carnegie Learning has one of the largest teams of certified teachers as tutors in the nation, partnering with school districts across the U.S. to accelerate learning.
This school year (2022-23, including this summer), the company’s high-dosage tutoring team served 9,675 students across the United States. On average, 94% of students who completed feedback forms found their tutoring sessions helpful and 84% of students had a response rating of 4 or 5 (5 being the highest rating) regarding their confidence in returning to math or ELA class because of their tutoring session. The average student growth rate from pre-assessment to post-assessment was approximately 70%, well above the national average.
Research shows that high-dosage tutoring – tutoring that takes place at least three times per week in small groups or one-on-one – is one of the most effective ways to prevent learning loss.
“Carnegie Learning has spent years building and implementing structured high dosage tutoring programs that expand teachers’ impact and accelerate learning,” said Courtney Lewis, Vice President of Tutoring Services, Carnegie Learning. “We’ve invested in identifying ways to help make tutoring programs accessible, affordable and sustainable, so school districts in Virginia can implement effective district-wide programs with proven results.”
Carnegie Learning continues to invest in its high dosage tutoring program significantly, increasing the number of certified tutors from 42 to 425 (912%), and the number of school districts the company is supporting by 243% (7 districts last year and 24 districts this year).
A role model for high-dosage tutoring success is Prince George’s County Public Schools. Carnegie Learning launched its tutoring service at Prince George’s County Public Schools during the COVID-related school closures of 2020, and the school district went that extra mile when they used CARES Act funds to implement online math tutoring services in partnership with Carnegie Learning. Since the program started, more than 3,000 middle and high school students have scheduled tutoring sessions to supplement classroom instruction, connecting their students with high-quality tutoring.
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