SCORE! Educational Centers

Infobox_Company
company_name = SCORE! Educational Centers
company_
company_type = Subsidiary of Kaplan, Inc.
foundation = Palo Alto, California, (1992)
location = Chicago, Illinois, USA
key_people = Alan Tripp, Founder
Justin Serrano, President
industry = Service
products = Specialized education services
revenue = (2004)
num_employees = Less than 2,000
homepage = [http://www.scorelearning.com/ www.scorelearning.com]

SCORE! Educational Centers (commonly SCORE!), owned by Kaplan, Inc., which is a subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, is a United States provider of customized supplementary computer-based education and one-on-one tutoring services for children in kindergarten through tenth grade. SCORE! offers materials in multiple subjects, including reading, mathematics, spelling, language arts, science, keyboarding, and writing.

At its height, SCORE! had over 165 centers in twelve states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia, and also in the District of Columbia. SCORE! also has locations in [http://score.co.il/ Israel]

Positive reinforcement

SCORE! employs methods of positive reinforcement to help students set and achieve academic goals. After ten-minute computer lessons, called "learning workouts", students obtain SCORE! cards, small magnetic squares emblazoned with the SCORE! logo, which can be earned for scoring over 70% on a lesson or making basketball shots. Students save these cards at home or redeem them for prizes (balls, Disneyland tickets, etc.). Since students spend most of their time at the computer, basketball shots break up the lessons and allow students to let out active energy. Shots are awarded for doing well on lessons or completing a full hour of lessons. The SCORE! coaches also award students with high fives. With help from their SCORE! coaches, students set long-term goals in an academic subject, measured against national curriculum standards. Students track their long-term progress on the "SCORE! Mountain" located in the learning center--a "goal program that rewards completion, helping students to set and pursue academic goals: students attain bronze, silver, gold, and even 'top of the mountain' goals when they complete a certain number of sessions, advancing them up a wooden mountain to the summit." [ [http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2007/MAY/html/spec-helpingstudents.html Education Update - Helping Students Climb the Learning Curve ] ] Positive reinforcement is a strong part of the corporate culture, as documented in Harvard Business School Case Studies in 1999 and 2000. [ [http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/search/searchResults.jhtml?userView=CORPORATE&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&Ntk=main_search&Ntt=SCORE+EDUCATIONAL&x=0&y=0&N=102 Harvard Business Online ] ]

Personalization in educational software

By developing a retail business model to deliver educational software for a monthly fee, SCORE! made available to individual consumers access to a large personalization software system that was originated by Stanford professors, Patrick Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson, and was previously only available to select schools and the Education Program for Gifted Youth. In 1963, IBM had established a partnership with Stanford University's Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS), directed by Suppes, to develop the first comprehensive CAI elementary school curriculum which was implemented on a large scale in schools in both California and Mississippi. In 1967 Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC, now Pearson Education Technologies [ [http://www.allbusiness.com/sector-61-educational-services/375179-1.html Pearson Education Technologies launches concert. | Education & Training > Education Systems & Institutions from AllBusiness.com ] ] ) was formed to market to schools the materials developed through the IBM partnership. As a student worked on the CCC software, the system learned the user’s strengths and weaknesses and created customized lessons based on criterion-referenced testing that produced on a personalized profile for each student. [ [http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/1960.html Instructional Systems Development ] ] The instructional design, based on automated personalization, was considered innovative in the early 1990s, compared to the traditional classroom model of instruction where students would cover educational material together at the same pace. [Seels, B. (1989). The instructional design movement in educational technology. Educational Technology, May, 11-15.] Based on computer-generated progress reports that CCC measured against national curriculum standards, typical students at SCORE! who worked for six months, or forty computer-hours, increased the equivalent of approximately two years in a classroom in math or reading. [ [http://www.svcn.com/archives/campbellreporter/04.18.01/tutorial-0116.html The Campbell Reporter | SCORE! Educational Center ] ]

History

tartup years: 1992-1996

Company founder, Alan Tripp, a graduate of Stanford University, opened the first SCORE! Educational Center in Palo Alto, California, in November 1992, and hired the company's first two Directors, Kai Drekmeier and Ingrid Stabb, who helped Tripp further develop the SCORE! concept and company culture throughout the startup years. In the summer of 1993, Stabb opened the second center in Menlo Park, California, established profitability for the first time for the SCORE! center business model [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E7D71639F931A15751C1A96F958260 A Learning Center Thrives, and Profits, in a Poor Locale - New York Times ] ] , and addressed customer attrition issues in the model by developing SCORE! Mountain." [ [http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2007/MAY/html/spec-helpingstudents.html Education Update - Helping Students Climb the Learning Curve ] ] , the company's first long-term customer loyalty program for the students with a reporting system for their parents. Drekmeier opened the third center in Los Altos, California, beginning a period of rapid growth for the company. SCORE!'s early success was attributed to personalized educational software provided by Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC), the corporate culture fueled by energetic SCORE! coaches [ [http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/search/searchResults.jhtml?userView=CORPORATE&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&Ntk=main_search&Ntt=SCORE+EDUCATIONAL&x=0&y=0&N=102 Harvard Business Online ] ] , and the loyalty business model. Glenn Tripp, Alan Tripp's brother, joined the company and opened the sixth center, in San Jose, California in 1994. Glen Tripp soon joined the executive management team and helped lead the company to further successes and operational efficiencies. Other professionals who played early leading roles in shaping the start-up company in 1993 and 1994 included (in alphabetical order) Ben Besley, James Cleveland, Gail Derecho, Allison Don, Sarah Hainstock, David Hannigan, Rich Kelly, Thomas Layton, Elizabeth Phythian, and Ann Smith.

After 1995, the company expanded its cadre of center directors and SCORE! coaches and grew to 19 centers serving thousands of students throughout California. With a chain of prime retail locations secured, the firm sought to increase revenue per center by investing in two new services: SCORE! Learning Adventures and Personal Academic Tutoring. In 1996 CCC decided not to sign an exclusive licensing agreement with SCORE! and instead awarded licensing to Kaplan. This limited SCORE!'s ability to expand, as the initial deal only allowed Alan Tripp to expand to eight more centers. In order to bypass this limit, on 17 April, 1996, Kaplan acquired SCORE! in a deal worth less than $10 million USD.

National expansion: 1996-2008

Once owned by Kaplan, Inc., the company expanded to over 165 locations in eleven states at its height. The division moved its headquarters from San Francisco, CA to Jack London Square. By 2005, the learning centers had helped more than 250,000 students since it first opened its doors in Palo Alto, CA. [ [http://www.kaplan.com/aboutkaplan/pressreleases/archive/2005/Scores_Partner_Headsprout.htm SCORE! Educational Centers Partners With Headsprout to Offer Early Reading Program for 4- to 7-Year-Olds ] ] By 2006, the centers served 82,000 students per year. [ [http://www.kaplan.com/aboutkaplan/pressreleases/archive/2006/March-28-Scoresummer.htm Avoid Learnin Loss This Summer With SCORE! Summer Programs ] ] The division headquarters moved again to Chicago, IL. In 2007 Kaplan and SCORE! released SCORE! Mountain Challenge Workbook Series and interactive companion.

The same year, likely due to continued weak results in revenue [http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=62487&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=995871&highlight=] , Kaplan made the decision to close 75 Score! centers, nearly half of the total 160 centers as of the end of 2007, eliminating entirely the regions in San Diego, Orange County, Texas, and Georgia among other centers in the remaining regions. [http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=62487&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1112934&highlight=] The closures were focused primarily on centers that solely offered only one of Score!'s progams (either the Advantage Program or the Personal Academic Tutoring program.) The company restructuring resulted in certain management and terminating certain employees from closed centers. The remaining centers offered both programs to increase revenue opportunities. [http://www.scorelearning.com/find] As of January, 2008, Score! operates 80 centers in eight states.

ee also

*Inquiry education
*Philosophy of education
*Personalization

External links

* [http://www.scorelearning.com/ Score! website]
* [http://www.scoremountain.com/ SCORE! Mountain Book website]
* [http://www.kaplan.com Kaplan website]
* [http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZ152&pageitemid=1&PMDbProgramId=32505&PMDbSiteId=2781&PMDbSolutionId=6724&PMDbSubSolutionId=6731&PMDbCategoryId=1662&level=4&CFID=22629&CFTOKEN=65465564 Successmaker Curriculum website]

References and external sources

* Seels, B. (1989). The instructional design movement in educational technology. Educational Technology, May, 11-15. http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/1960.html

* Niemiec, R.P. & Walberg, H.T. (1989). From teaching machines to microcomputers: Some milestones in the history of computer-based instruction. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 21(3), 263-276. http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/ibm.html

* Wyatt, Edward, "A Learning Center Thrives, and Profits, in a Poor Locale" The New York Times, December 22, 1999. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E7D71639F931A15751C1A96F958260

* Mayes, Erin, "Private tutorial center opens to serve students in Cambrian area" The Campell Reporter, April 18, 2001. http://www.svcn.com/archives/campbellreporter/04.18.01/tutorial-0116.html

* "Pearson Education Technologies launches concert" Heller Report on Educational Technology Markets, December 1, 2002. http://www.allbusiness.com/sector-61-educational-services/375179-1.html

* Sherwood, Emily, Ph.D. "Helping Students Climb the Learning Curve: From Base Camp to Summit with Kaplan’s Tutoring Company, SCORE!" Education Update Online, May 2007. http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2007/MAY/html/spec-helpingstudents.html
* Adler, Christine, "New Workbook Series Aims at Avoiding the Academic 'Summer Slide'" NYMetroParents, October 13, 2007. http://www.nymetroparents.com/newarticle.cfm?colid=8868