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In a press release today, Santa Monica-based Engrade announced it had been acquired by McGraw-Hill Education for an undisclosed amount. Engrade’s platform, which brings K-12 data, school curriculum and educational tools together will be a strong addition to McGraw-Hill Education’s already growing portfolio, which most recently included the acquisition of the ALEKS Corporation last June.
The acquisition of Engrade will allow McGraw-Hill Education to further advance its efforts towards creating an all-purpose platform that will allow K-12 educators to deliver more digital instructional content and assess student growth with performance-based data.
“As states and districts continue to search for ways to improve the effectiveness of teaching and personalized instruction, the need for an open, centralized technology platform that can provide actionable data and manage instructional interactions with students will only continue to grow,” Buzz Waterhouse, president and CEO of McGraw-Hill Education, said in the release. “By combining our content and assessment with Engrade’s platform and tools in an integration-friendly ecosystem, we will help schools bring together the elements of digital education in a cohesive, learner-focused system that advances student achievement. We’re also excited to welcome Engrade’s technology team, which is one of the best in education.”
Engrade’s team of six come from various companies and educational backgrounds, anywhere from being a schoolteacher to special assistant for George W. Bush at the U.S. Department of Education. It’s a real dream team of candidates for a digital education company, which was probably why Engrade’s last funding round in July was a $5 million Series B that put their total amount raised at $8 million to date. Engrade’s platform currently focuses on four main areas to better student outcomes:
Corebook: A set of tools to help manage daily work and improve student performance.
Teach: The platform integrates digital content between schools and districts to allow for it to be filtered and assigned to students, measuring activity and performance levels.
Improve: View data district-wide or school-wide to analyse student performance.
Assessments: Easily create custom assessments or make use of technology-enhanced school assessments.
Zach Posner, CEO of Engrade, went on to explain that the U.S. educational system is undergoing rapid changes: “With the Engrade platform, students can log in once and use multiple tools and content sources, and teachers and administrators can track a student’s progress in all of those tools from a single dashboard.”
The combination of Engrade’s learning platform technology with McGraw-Hill Education’s 125 years of experience in the education sector promises to be a winning combination.
