Another major publisher and assessment provider are joining forces in an effort to offer K-12 districts a way to connect and draw more insights from student data.
McGraw Hill, a longtime provider of academic resources, said it has partnered with Pearson to integrate its interim assessments into the former company’s core curriculum products.
The move will bring Pearson’s PRoPL, or the Pearson Review of Progress & Learning assessment tool, into McGraw Hill’s instructional materials. The integration is meant to allow districts to get additional suggestions on instruction based on student needs, Jana Thompson, chief product officer for McGraw Hill School told EdWeek Market Brief.
The partnership bears similarities to other recent combinations of organizations seeking to sell K-12customers a comprehensive platform that simplifies data collection and analysis.
In 2023, HMH acquired NWEA in a pairing of two major players in the K-12 space seeking to bring curriculum and interim assessment platforms together.
While not a merger or acquisition, the platform partnership between McGraw Hill and Pearson has a similar mission, as it aims to forge additional connections between core curriculum materials and assessments, and then use those connections to inform teachers’ classroom practices.
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“To create the coherence of this information leading to the next action — that’s really where we are and what we’re working to do,” Thompson said.
The partnership will allow students and teachers to launch the PRoPL assessment from within the core curriculum and combine the data with feedback from formative assessments built into the curriculum throughout the year. The platform can then provide recommendations for what types of lessons and support a student or group of students will need moving forward.
“We know teachers are doing this every day by taking in different inputs,” Thompson said. “We want to help make that easier and make those connections for them to then apply it to where they want to go next.”
McGraw Hill says it has 30 offices internationally and works in the prekindergarten, K-21, college, and workforce markets in more than 80 languages. Pearson says it employs 18,000 employees in nearly 200 countries.
PRoPL assessments are aligned to state standards and should be able to be completed in 30 minutes. Testing takes place three times a year.
McGraw Hill officials found the Pearson assessments especially attractive because of the relatively compressed timeframe in which they’re delivered, and because of the quality of the test items and the “high-quality results,” Thompson said.
She noted that the company will also draw in assessment data from third-party sources for districts that request it.
The first state to have access to Pearson’s PRoPL assessments in McGraw Hill’s core offerings will be California, Thompson said. It will be integrated into California Reveal Math, its K-8 math curriculum. Additional states, subjects, and grade levels will be delivered in the years ahead.
Combining Pearson’s assessments with McGraw Hill’s core curriculum creates a system in which “academic data flows naturally into teaching decisions, helping every student receive the right support at the right time,” Trent Workman, managing director at Pearson’s U.S. K-12 assessments division, said in a statement.
U.K.-based Pearson’s offerings in the K-12 space are largely limited to assessments. Pearson K-12 Learning was sold off in 2019 to create what’s now Savvas Learning.