TALENT DEVELOPMENT
TALENT DEVELOPMENT news | May 12, 2023
Learning technology company HMH today announced the acquisition of Quebec-based education technology company, Classcraft. The acquisition will bring to HMH a best-in-class engineering team and innovative functionality that improves the customer experience, empowering educators and supporting student engagement.
"HMH looks forward to welcoming the talented team from Classcraft into the HMH community," says Peter George, Chief Technology Officer at HMH. "Montreal is already home to an HMH technology Center of Excellence, and we are thrilled to begin working together to bring innovative learning experiences to even more students and educators."
Known for creating unique, dynamic, learning processes to support student engagement, achievement, and motivation, Classcraft uses science-based motivational principles to support learning.
"At Classcraft, we seek to make school more relevant and meaningful by creating playful and collaborative learning experiences that teach the whole child," says Shawn Young, CEO at Classcraft. "We know HMH shares that goal and we're excited to join them in supporting millions of educators and students."
Current Classcraft users will continue to have access to Classcraft for the '23-24 school year in its existing form and contracts with schools and districts will be honored.
HMH is a portfolio company of Veritas Capital ("Veritas"), a leading investor at the intersection of technology and government.
About HMH
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students' potential and extend teachers' capabilities. HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PRnewswire | March 23, 2023
Procare Solutions is pleased to offer a new way for child care centers to bolster their educational offerings by including integrated assessments within Procare's classroom management capability.
With the release of Vine Assessments™, Procare Solutions has become the only provider of child care management software to offer integrated proprietary early childhood assessments for children from birth to 5 years old at no additional cost.
Vine Assessments is an integrated framework that gives early childhood educators and staff a way to clearly articulate the growth and development of children in their care. It includes clear and easy childhood assessments that align with all 50 state standards and provides developmental continuums with 21 goals that apply to children from birth to age 5 as they prepare for kindergarten.
"When early childhood educators can provide a robust assessment to their children and families, it elevates the learning and development of the children in their care and helps transform their businesses into true early childhood education programs," said Jon Pollock, chief product officer of Procare Solutions.
With 91% agreement rate among child care professionals, Vine Assessments are easy to use and understand.
Child care centers are leading providers of early childhood education and are at the forefront of addressing delays to help young learners recover from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Children born during the pandemic are scoring lower on average on tests of gross motor, fine motor, social and problem-solving skills compared with those born before COVID-19, studies have shown.
In addition to learning delays, many of these children are talking, walking and interacting later and less frequently.
"Children need age-appropriate assessments well before entering kindergarten, as well as assessments that teachers of all experience levels can conduct accurately and without additional stress during their already busy days," said JoAnn Kintzel, CEO of Procare Solutions. "We are continually looking for ways to help centers foster the growth of children in their care, which is something Vine Assessments can help achieve."
"The list of 21 goals is a solid list that providers will find familiar and useful. The numbering system is very intuitive and helpful for navigating the instrument," said Dr. Kristen Burmester, director of administration and operations of the early childhood education program at the University of California at Berkeley.
Teachers using Procare will be able to tie their lessons and observations directly to the appropriate Vine Assessment indicator from the web-based software and Procare child care mobile app.
The simplicity of the Vine Assessments for teachers is what won over Melissa L. Hood, director of early childhood education at the Calvert School in Baltimore.
Her center uses Vine Assessments for all 150 kids at their two centers.
"Assessments provided by the state were too cumbersome and more suited to elementary school-aged children," she said. "They sometimes were 15 pages long and too difficult for parents to decipher."
A childhood assessment conducted through Vine Assessments offered a better alternative.
"It's to the point, it's accurate, it relates to age-appropriateness," she said. "Our teachers like Vine Assessments much better than the state-provided assessments."
About Procare Solutions
For more than 30 years, Procare Solutions has been the leading provider of child care management software, family engagement, integrated payment processing, technology and services. Procare is used by two out of three child care businesses that use child care management software. The company supports more than 37,000 child care centers, preschools, daycares, after school programs, camps and related facilities with comprehensive software that has the power to manage every aspect of their business, enrich classroom and family interactions, and automate the payment process. Procare offers web-based, on-premises and cloud-hosting solutions and supports customers of all sizes from single-center operations to complex multinational enterprises.
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ONLINE EDUCATION
PowerSchool | June 02, 2023
PowerSchool today announced Maryvit Education Center (MEC) in Chonburi, Thailand has expanded its use of PowerSchool Schoology Learning, a key component of the PowerSchool Personalized Learning Cloud, to support K-10 students at its new campus, which opened in May 2023. With MEC’s newest campus open for the 2023-24 school year, MEC teachers will have access to intuitive tools to improve student performance, collaboration, parental and family engagement, and standards tracking.
“PowerSchool Schoology Learning played a pivotal role in our operations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, so selecting the platform to support our new campus’ operations only made sense,” said Dr. Steven Kitikiatisak, President, Maryvit Education Center. “Schoology Learning and our PowerSchool support team have proven they can help us create better learning outcomes for our students and staff. We look forward to leveraging Schoology Learning at our newest campus in the upcoming academic year.”
Since its integration across the MEC network, Schoology Learning has helped its educators effectively manage course and material distribution. Notably, the platform helped MEC improve its hybrid learning infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers were able to leverage the learning management system to create digital learning curriculums and games that increased students’ participation while remote. More broadly, Schoology also helped MEC increase parent-teacher-student communications and overall visibility into students’ progress and learning.
Further, MEC teachers predominantly teach and create all their Schoology Learning content in Thai. They launched custom Schoology Learning user guides in Thai via a YouTube channel, to support students and their fellow educators.
Maryvit Education Center is a private Catholic school network located within the Chonburi Province of Thailand. MEC provides more than 10,000 students a Thai-focused learning curriculum with an added emphasis on English and Chinese studies. The school network operates across three different campuses within the cities of Pattaya, Sattahip, and Bowin, and opened a new campus in Nikhom Pattana, Rayong in May 2023.
About PowerSchool
PowerSchoolis the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries.
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