Pearson Education
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| Parent company | Pearson PLC |
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| Founded | 1998 |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Upper Saddle River, New Jersey |
| Publication types | Books |
| Number of employees | 40,000 (2009) |
| Official website | www.pearsoned.com |
Pearson is an education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well as directly to students. Pearson owns leading educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, BBC Active, Bug Club, eCollege, Fronter, Longman, MyEnglishLab, Penguin Readers, Prentice Hall, Poptropica and Financial Times Press.
Pearson is part of Pearson PLC, which also owns Penguin Books and the Financial Times. It was created in 1998 when Pearson PLC purchased the education division of Simon & Schuster from Viacom and merged it with its own education division, Addison-Wesley Longman to form Pearson Education. Pearson Education was rebranded to Pearson in 2011, and split into an International and a North American division.
Though Pearson generates approximately 60% of its sales in North America, they operate in more than 70 countries. Pearson International is headquartered in London with offices across Europe, Asia and South America.
Pearson North America is headquartered in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey with major divisions based in San Francisco, Boston, Columbus, Indianapolis and Chandler.[1]
Imprints
Pearson has a number of publishing imprints:
- Addison-Wesley Professional (formerly Addison Wesley)[2]
- Adobe Press
- Allyn & Bacon
- BBC Active[2]
- Benjamin Cummings
- Causeway Press[2]
- Cisco Press
- Edexcel[2]
- enVision Math
- Exam Cram
- Financial Times
- FT Press (formerly FT Prentice Hall)[2]
- Ginn and Company[2]
- Harvester Wheatsheaf[2]
- Heinemann (formerly Heinemann Education)[2]
- IBM Press
- InformIT
- LifeBound
- Macromedia Press
- Maths Champs
- MySQL Press
- New Riders
- Novell Press
- Oliver & Boyd[2]
- Payne Galway
- Peachpit
- Pearson Longman (formerly Longman)[2]
- Pearson Scott Foresman
- Penguin Books
- Pi Press
- Pitman[2]
- Prentice Hall[2]
- Puffin[2]
- Que Publishing
- Rigby[2]
- SAMS Publishing
- Silver Burdett
- VangoBooks (textbooks)
- Wharton School Publishing, with Wharton School
- York Notes[2]
Partnerships
Pearson has partnered with five other higher-education publishers to create CourseSmart, a company developed to sell college textbooks in eTextbook format on a common platform.[3] In 2010, Pearson agreed to a 5 year, $32 million, contract with the New York State Department of Education to design tests for students in grades 4-8.
"Pineapple-Gate"
In the spring of 2012, tests that Pearson designed for the NYSED were found to contain over 30 errors, which caused controversy. One of the most prominent featured a passage about a talking pineapple on the 8th Grade ELA test (revealed to be based from Daniel Pinkwater's The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant, with the eggplant changed into a pineapple). After public outcry, the NYSED announced it would not count the questions in scoring.[4] Other errors included a miscalculated question on the 8th Grade Mathematics test regarding astronomical units, a 4th grade math question with two correct answers, errors in the 6th grade ELA scoring guide, and over twenty errors on foreign language math tests.[5]
Technology products
- Active Teach, a unique digital learning resource that combines pedagogically sound text books with innovative teaching and learning materials.[6]
- Course Compass extensions to Blackboard Inc.'s
- MyEnglishLab, online English language learning.
- CourseConnect, a library of customisable online courses
- Livelessons, video training from technology experts
- MyMathLab and MyStatsLab, comprehensive online, interactive teaching/learning systems[7]
- Pearson LearningStudio, SaaS-based Learning Management System
- Market Leader Live, Online Business English training
- Mastering Platform, college level homework assessment system
- OpenClass, free learning environment delivered from the cloud, integrated with Google Apps for Education™
- Maths Champs, A free maths games service for primary age children.
Competitors
Pearson operates globally and has a range of competitors, both worldwide and in each country in which it operates. In the United States, its main K-12 competitors include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a subsidiary of EMPG; and McGraw Hill Education, a division of the McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. International competitors include Macmillan Education, a division of Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and the Houghton affiliate EMPGI.
Harcourt Assessment acquisition
Pearson announced the acquisition of Harcourt Assessment in May 2007.[8] The Harcourt Assessment business was merged into the Assessment & Information group in January 2008 after a review by the U.S. Department of Justice was completed.[9]
References
- ^ "Contact Us". Retrieved January 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Pearson Education Ltd, The Publishers Association, 16 April 2008 (retrieved 8 February 2012)
- ^ "New Agreement Makes eTextbooks Available to Students".
- ^ Collins, Gail. "A Very Pricey Pineapple". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ^ Haimson, Leonie. "Pineapplegate continues, with 20 more errors, and finally an apologia from Pearson". NYC Public School Parents. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ^ "Pearson Education launches digital learning ‘Active Teach’". careermitra.com. Retrieved 5 November 2012.
- ^ "Review of Mymathlab Student Access Kit (Standalone) / Edition 4". Barnes&Noble.com. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
- ^ "Pearson acquires Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from Reed Elsevier". Pearson. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
- ^ "Pearson Completes Acquisition of Harcourt Assessment". Assessment & Information group of Pearson. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
