Harcourt Education Forms Harcourt Connected Learning Unit, Acquires Achieve Data Solutions

NEW YORK, Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Global education provider Harcourt Education announced today that it has acquired Achieve Data Solutions (ADS), a provider of web-based data analysis and reporting systems for schools.

ADS is best known for DataDirector, a web-based data management system that enables school administrators and teachers to report and analyze testing and other data to meet AYP reporting requirements and monitor student progress to inform instruction and remediation decisions. ADS also provides a test item bank platform used by school districts and teachers to generate and administer formative assessments.

ADS will be part of Harcourt Connected Learning, a newly-formed division of Harcourt Education headed by Julie McGee. The mission of Harcourt Connected Learning is twofold: to provide educators with best-of-breed technology-driven productivity and teaching tools, and to coordinate development and sales of tailored, comprehensive solutions, drawing on assets and resources from across Harcourt divisions. Classroom Connect, a provider of on-line professional development for teachers and technology applications programs for students, will also be part of the new division. ADS President Lane Rankin will continue to manage the business and will report to McGee.

Commenting on the acquisition, McGee said, "Achieve Data Systems is an ideal fit for Harcourt and a key element of our strategy to provide easy to use, data driven, connected learning solutions for educators. DataDirector is truly the best system of its kind on the market today. It has the warehousing capacity to handle multiple years' data, something competing systems lack, and teachers love its intuitiveness and ease of use. The ADS test bank platform is technologically advanced and user friendly. The item bank contains over 10,000 test items, tagged to state standards, and we plan to increase that number significantly."

In his remarks about ADS joining the new Harcourt unit, Rankin stated, "What a great opportunity for ADS to be an integral part of Harcourt Connected Learning. Combining our easy to use tools with Harcourt's extensive resources will create powerful solutions to move education forward. We are excited to bring our vision supported by high quality customer service to a national audience."

About Achieve Data Solutions

Achieve Data Solutions provides next generation web-based software and services to the K-12 market. Its signature product, DataDirector, has quickly become the Gold standard for helping educators make sense of their data and is in use across the country by well over a 1,000 schools and for over 1.5 million students.

Achieve Data Solutions is based in San Bernardino, CA and was founded in 2002 by Action Learning Systems, a California based professional development company and WebMedia Solutions, an educational technology developer.

About Harcourt Education

Harcourt Education is a global education provider serving students and teachers in PreK through grade 12, adult learners, and readers of all ages. The Harcourt companies are Harcourt School Publishers; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Harcourt Achieve; Harcourt Assessment; Greenwood/Heinemann; Harcourt Trade Publishers, and Harcourt Education International. For further information, visit http://www.harcourt.com/ or http://www.harcourtcl.com/.

Harcourt Education is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (http://www.reedelsevier.com/), a world-leading publisher and information provider. It is owned equally by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV .