A favorable financial market and schools’ increasing adoption of educational technology fueled a strong fourth quarter for K-12 mergers and acquisitions.
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg deepened his involvement in ed tech by making investments in Newsela and MasteryConnect.
News Corp. parts with its education division after suffering huge financial losses on a $1 billion investment and laying off hundreds of employees recently.
PeopleAdmin’s acquisition of SearchSoft Solutions will give the companies a combined reach into 4,000 school districts to help education leaders manage personnel decisions.
Nevada’s state board of examiners has awarded a $51 million contract for statewide testing to DRC, which will replaced Measured Progress, a company that took blame for testing breakdowns earlier this year.
Schools’ growing acceptance of purchasing digital content by subscription is one reason investors see the possibility of returns in the acquisition and mergers of education businesses.
The U.K.-based company that put interactive whiteboards in U.S. schools is being purchased by NetDragon Websoft, a developer of online games and mobile Internet platforms.
Sandbox Partners is buying the Family Education Network, a Pearson “edu-tainment” platform, for an undisclosed amount.
The Boston-based company will acquire a portion of Scholastic’s ed-tech business in an effort to strengthen its K-12 offerings and build other operations, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt says.
Three ed-tech companies raised nearly $20 million and LinkedIn entered the education market with a $1.5 billion acquisition of lynda.com.