Amplify (company)

Amplify Education, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryEducation
PredecessorWireless Generation
Founded2000; 24 years ago (2000)
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.
Headquarters55 Washington Street Suite 800, Brooklyn, New York, U.S. 11201-1071
Key people
Productscurriculum, assessments, consultations
Websiteamplify.com

Amplify is a curriculum and assessment company launched in July 2012. Amplify Curriculum was built on the foundation of Wireless Generation, an educational company the original News Corp bought in 2010. Amplify products and services provide assessment and analytics for data-driven instruction and next-generation digital curriculum based on the Common Core State Standards.[1]

News Corp sold Amplify in 2015 for an undisclosed sum to a management team supported by a group of private investors, including the Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs.[2][3]

History

Amplify was formed after the purchase of Wireless Generation, which was founded in 2000 by Larry Berger and Greg Gunn. The company sold its products and services to districts and states that used government funding for early reading and other programs. It also developed and maintained the New York City online warehouse of student data ARIS, and wrote the algorithm for the School of One, the New York City Department of Education's math help system. Larry Berger served as the CEO of Wireless Generation until the sale of the company in 2010. At the time of the sale, the users of Wireless Generation software included three million students and 200,000 educators.[4]

In November 2010 a 90% stake in Wireless Generation was purchased by News Corp for $360 million. News Corp changed the name of its subsidiary in 2012 to Amplify.[5] Following the acquisition, News Corp invested about half a billion dollars into the company in order to expand its offerings to devices and digital curriculum, designed to replace hard copy textbooks, and to decrease the price-point gap between traditional textbooks and tablet-based education.[6]

In 2012, Amplify signed a contract with Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop reporting tools for teacher assessment. In 2013, the two signed a contract to create a digital library of formative assessment professional learning tools designed for Common Core State Standards teachers. This took place before Amplify was purchased by News Corps.[7] The library provided online access to teachers for formative test items and assessment tools.[8] In March 2013, Amplify released the Amplify Tablet, a customized Asus Android tablet with a suite of subscription-based software, offering education-oriented features and apps designed for K-12 learning environments.[9][10][11] In March 2014, the company released a new version of the Amplify Tablet designed by Intel.[12] In 2015, Amplify announced it would cease marketing the tablet to new customers but would continue to service its existing customers.[13]

Joel Klein, former chancellor for the New York City Department of Education and an executive vice-president with News Corp served as Amplify's CEO until 2015.[14] During his time as CEO, Klein stated that the goal of Amplify is to encourage the integration of computer technology into the common educational environment, rather than a separate learning environment such as a laboratory.[15]

In October 2015, News Corp sold Amplify to a management team supported by a group of private investors, including Emerson Collective. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Larry Berger became CEO.[16][17]

In 2018, technology publication Fast Company reported that Amplify's revenue was $125 million and it was serving almost 4 million students.[18] Its science program had been adopted by several large urban districts, including Chicago, New York, Denver, and Los Angeles, and had 950,000 users.[18] Also that year, Amplify announced that it entered the digital supplemental market with two programs: Amplify Close Reading and Amplify Fractions.[19] However, Amplify has since retired the fractions product.

In October 2021, Amplify raised $215 million in growth funding in a round led by Learn Capital and A-Street Ventures, in conjunction with Emerson Collective.[20] In May 2023, Amplify announced it had raised a Series C funding round led by Cox Enterprises to further its K-12 product offerings.[21][22]

Products and services

Student assessment

Amplify provides assessment tools for K-12 schools. Tools are available for Math and ELA (English language arts), Pre-K to 8th Grade. As of 2013, Amplify provided data-hosting infrastructure for educational institutions,[23] but this service is no longer available. Amplify's software uses data analysis to plan teaching tactics and track educational results.[24] As of 2011, Wireless Generation offered the services of data coaches to teachers in Delaware,[25] but this is no longer available from Amplify.

Amplify's mCLASS assessments are intended to demonstrate the progress and skills of students learning to read. According to the company, the assessments offer useful information about the reading proficiency of students which teachers can use to adjust instruction plans accordingly.[26] Amplify mCLASS helps identify students facing dyslexia.[27] In June 2021, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) of North Carolina signed in a $14.5-million three-year contract with Amplify to use its mCLASS product.[28] As of August 2022, mCLASS was administered to a total of around 1.6 million students in some 35 states.[26]

Curriculum

English language arts

ELA curricula are based upon the Common Core State Standards. The Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program teaches reading, writing, speaking, and listening to students in preschool through Grade 5. It works to strengthen students’ understanding of literature, American history, and the sciences.[29] Amplify CKLA is based on the science of reading, which aims to explain how students actually learn to read.[30] This curriculum enables students to connect their reading lessons to other core subjects and celebrates students' varied cultural backgrounds.[31]

The Amplify ELA curriculum also includes educational games that can be played by students in and outside of class time,[6][23] and a library of 300 pre-loaded books.[32]

Amplify is partnering with the Core Knowledge Foundation to publish and distribute materials across the US for its Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program and its Spanish counterpart Caminos, the literacy curriculum for preschool through Grade 5 which builds skills through domains in history and the sciences.[33][34]

Science

Amplify's science curriculum is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards, developed in partnership with the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. In each lesson, students take on the role of a scientist or engineer. The lessons focus on natural phenomena and the application of concepts to real-world problems.[35]

Math

In May 2022, Amplify acquired the Desmos curriculum and the website teacher.desmos.com. Some 50 employees joined Amplify. Desmos Studio was spun off as a separate public benefit corporation focused on building free-to-use math tools, such as an online graphing calculator.[36]

See also

References

  1. ^ Dawson, Christopher. (2012-07-23) News Corp unveils Amplify: New partnership with AT&T for digital ed. ZDNet. Retrieved on 2013-07-19.
  2. ^ Nair, Arathy S; Baker, Liana B. (October 1, 2015). "News Corp sells digital education brand Amplify". Reuters.
  3. ^ Baker, Liana B. (November 21, 2015). "Laurene Powell Jobs backs Amplify education company bought from News Corp". Reuters.
  4. ^ Anna Phillips (November 22, 2010). "Murdoch buys education tech company Wireless Generation". Chalkbeat. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  5. ^ "News Corp brands education business Amplify". AP Online. July 23, 2012. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  6. ^ a b Travis Andrews (August 29, 2013). "Inside News Corp's $540 Million Bet on American Classrooms". Mashable. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  7. ^ Cavanagh, Sean (March 14, 2013). "Amplify Insight Wins Contract from Common-Core Testing Consortium". EdWeek Market Brief.
  8. ^ Schaffhauser, Dian (March 18, 2013). "Amplify Insight Creating Digital Library of Assessment Tools for Smarter Balanced". The Journal.
  9. ^ Chozick, Amy (March 6, 2013). "News Corp. Has a Tablet for Schools". The New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  10. ^ Rotella, Carlo (September 12, 2013). "No Child Left Untableted". The New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  11. ^ "News Corp.'s Amplify Unveils Education Tablet". PC Magazine. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  12. ^ Carol Rotella (September 12, 2013). "No Child Left Untableted". New York Times. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  13. ^ Sean Cavanagh, "News Corp. Announces Plans to Wind Down Amplifyís Tablet Business," "MarketBrief", August 13, 2015.
  14. ^ Lukas I. Alpert and George Stahl, "News Corp Sells Its Amplify Education Businesses," The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2015.
  15. ^ "Joel Klein interview". Wall Street Journal. January 18, 2013. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  16. ^ Nair, Arathy S; Baker, Liana B. (October 1, 2015). "News Corp sells digital education brand Amplify". Reuters.
  17. ^ Baker, Liana B. (November 21, 2015). "Laurene Powell Jobs backs Amplify education company bought from News Corp". Reuters.
  18. ^ a b Harris, Ainsley (October 16, 2018). "Inside Laurene Powell Jobs's big bet on digital curriculum". Fast Company.
  19. ^ "All the Upgrades and Updates From Apple, Google and More at ISTE 2018 - EdSurge News". EdSurge. June 28, 2018.
  20. ^ "Amplify Raises $215M in Growth Funding". Finmes. October 26, 2021.
  21. ^ Caffrey, Michelle (June 2, 2023). "K-12 Dealmaking: Substitute Teaching Startup Secures $38M; Amplify Raises Undisclosed Series C". EdWeek Market Brief.
  22. ^ "Amplify Raises Series C Funding". Finsmes. May 23, 2023.
  23. ^ a b Chozick, Amy (May 6, 2013). "News Corp. Has a Tablet for Schools". New York Times. Archived from the original on March 10, 2013. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  24. ^ Calvin Reid (December 5, 2012). "News Corp.'s Joel Klein Outlines Plans for Amplify Education Unit". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  25. ^ McNeil, Michele (May 25, 2011). "Delaware Pushes to Meet Race to Top Promises". Education Week. Archived from the original on September 18, 2022. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
  26. ^ a b Fofaria, Rupen (August 28, 2022). "Elementary students made growth last year in skills that lead to reading proficiency, new data show". EdNC.
  27. ^ Griesbach, Rebecca (May 23, 2023). "Dyslexia advocates, parents warn against efforts to tweak Alabama reading program". AL.com.
  28. ^ Fofaria, Rupen (June 4, 2021). "DPI maps out science of reading plan and returns to Amplify's mCLASS tool to assess readers". EdNC.
  29. ^ Smith, Mike (July 6, 2023). "IRSD elementary schools taking on major shift to CKLA model". Coastal Point.
  30. ^ Hammack, Zach (March 21, 2023). "From Shakespeare to 'Don Quixote', new reading curriculum engages students, Lincoln teachers say". Lincoln Journal Star.
  31. ^ McFadden, Maya (December 1, 2022). "Choices Narrowed For Schools' Reading Pivot". New Haven Independent.
  32. ^ Jordan Shapiro (March 3, 2014). "Amplify's Middle School Content Makes Learning Look Beautiful". Forbes. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
  33. ^ Smith, Mike (July 6, 2023). "IRSD elementary schools taking on major shift to CKLA model". Coastal Point.
  34. ^ Schimke, Ann (October 18, 2022). "How a Colorado district changed its reading curriculum to better reflect students". Chalkbeat Colorado.
  35. ^ "Will new standards improve elementary science education?". July 11, 2018.
  36. ^ Kuykendall, Kristal (May 18, 2012). "Amplify Acquires Desmos' Math Curriculum; Desmos Calculators to Spin Off, Remain Free -". THE Journal. Retrieved May 21, 2022.