GREELEY, Colo. and BELLEVUE, Wash. (Feb. 7, 2008) -- GlobalScholar.com, a member of the Knowledge Universe family of companies, has acquired Excelsior Software, a leading provider of assessment management solutions for the K-12 education market.  This acquisition will provide educators and administrators the rich Pinnacle Education Solutions suite of products offered by Excelsior Software paired with a curriculum and instructional management solution and a set of intuitive collaboration tools developed by GlobalScholar.com.

"For more than 20 years, we have been dedicated to education innovation, helping students, parents, educators, and administrators collect, analyze and act on the information they need to improve student outcomes," said William Zaggle, president and CEO of Excelsior Software.  "Now, as part of the GlobalScholar team, we have access to the resources that allow us to provide educators with an expanded set of tools and the real-time data they need to have a meaningful impact on student performance.  The combination of our two products truly supports our unified vision for the future of student learning and success."

The GlobalScholar platform enables educators to more efficiently and effectively create, manage and align content, assessments, curriculum, standards, and supplemental learning resources.  The acquisition will provide educators access to both GlobalScholar's management solution and Excelsior Software's gradebook, reporting and analytics technology.  This combination creates one application that meets the needs of educators, administrators, parents, and students as they drive student achievement.

"We believe that technology-based administrative and instructional solutions should be a seamless and thoughtful integration within the school environment," said Kal Raman, CEO of GlobalScholar.com.  "The wealth of experience the Excelsior Software team brings and the integration of our products will allow us to provide the tools educators and administrators need to confidently improve student outcomes."

"The combination of these two products provides schools and districts the tools they need to successfully manage the learning environment," said Tom Boyson, former San Diego County Superintendent of Schools and Kentucky Commissioner of Education.  "At last, there is a solution that brings all the pieces together -- informed choices based on meaningful data not just for administrators, but for the individual classroom teacher as well."  Boyson joined GlobalScholar.com in January 2008 and will be instrumental in the development of new products and services created by Excelsior Software and GlobalScholar.com.

Launched in 2007, GlobalScholar.com offers two additional education-related services.  The first is an online tutoring website, where parents and students can safely connect with trusted educators who provide one-on-one tutoring, instant homework help and self-paced learning.  And the second is a set of search websites, CollegeFinder (http://collegefinder.globalscholar.com) and SchoolFinder (http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com), which help students and parents learn about, compare and make informed decisions about schools to attend.

Excelsior Software, which has built many deep relationships during its 21-year tenure in the education industry, serves nearly 1,000 school districts, including some of the largest in the U.S., such as Miami-Dade County Public Schools (Fla.), Broward County Public Schools (Fla.) and Montgomery County Public Schools (Md.).  Excelsior's Pinnacle Education Solutions suite coupled with the resources and talent provided by the GlobalScholar.com team, will ensure educators and administrators have access to the relevant data, information and resources that will inform decisions from curriculum mapping to lesson planning.

There are no plans for internal staff changes and both companies remain committed to raising student achievement by providing immediate access to performance information, increasing teacher productivity and improving communication.  GlobalScholar.com will remain headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., and Excelsior Software will remain headquartered in Greeley, Colo.  The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

About GlobalScholar.com
Headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., GlobalScholar.com is committed to providing students of all ages the confidence and control they need to make informed decisions about their education.  The company develops products that effectively integrate and align the resources of education -- people, technology and content -- to improve efficiency and performance.  These products include CollegeFinder, SchoolFinder, and GlobalScholar.com where students can select and interact with highly qualified online tutors or take self-paced courses.  GlobalScholar is backed by Ignition Partners and Knowledge Universe Education.  For more information, please visit http://www.globalscholar.com or phone 877-824-4040.

As the need for communication between parents and teachers increases, the Pottsville School District has worked to meet the demand for interaction head-on by implementing a new Web-based student information system. The districts Pinnacle System has allowed parents to remain up-to-date on their childs progress at school, and has increased communication between parents and teachers, according to Jenifer Cioppa, high school librarian. Pottsville School District has purchased and is in the process of implementing the Pinnacle System district wide, Cioppa said. The middle grades and the high school began using components of the system at the beginning of this school year.

The Pinnacle System integrates grade and administrative data while simplifying the data entry and reporting processes. It is a complete electronic student information management system, not just a grade book for teachers.

According to Cioppa, grades, student attendance, discipline reports and other data can be recorded, standardized, viewed and used by teachers, administrators, students, and parents through the Pinnacle System. Implementation is an ongoing process and is being accomplished in phases, Cioppa said. Currently, the Parent Internet Viewer, Web Gradebook, Gradebook2, Principal Viewer, Attendance Viewer, and Student Viewer are installed and integrated into the daily school day. Cioppa said the Pinnacle System is a collection of products, including Gradebook2, Attendance Viewer, Student Viewer, Principal Viewer, Parent Internet Viewer, Web Gradebook and Pinnacle Notification Systems. Gradebook2 is the electronic grade book used by the teachers to report grades, attendance and discipline. Any information posted in Gradebook2 is available in real time to the parents, students and administration.

The Parent Internet Viewer and the Student Viewer allow parents and students to view grades, attendance and discipline information in real time. Parents and students received unique IDs and passwords for the viewers, and the viewers are secure the students name does not appear on it.

The Web Gradebook allows teachers to work on their grades at home without any of the checking process previously used with GradeQuick and Edline. Cioppa said Pottsville used Edline, a similar system many local school districts use to keep parents updated on student progress, for several years before switching to the Pinnacle System.

Pottsville had used Edline for the past five years, she said. The one complaint heard from parents about Edline was that it was not always current. The Pinnacle System eliminates that problem. As soon as information is entered into the grade book, the information is available to parents, students and administration.

Another plus for us is the Principal Viewer and the Attendance Viewer. These are used by the office and administrators; information entered by them is sent to the teachers grade books.

The customizability of the program was another plus in the decision made to move to the Pinnacle program.

The district will continue to improve its use of the Pinnacle System, Cioppa said.

Future phases will include the implementation of an automatic generation of letters to parents based on criteria they select, such as if a student receives a failing grade, she said. Also planned is the integration with a phone system to provide school-to-home attendance and grade reporting. We are in the process of entering the standards into the program, and this will allow us to link the students performance to appropriate standards and benchmarks, proficiency levels or scoring rubrics.

Parents and teachers prefer this system. The teachers find it easier and quicker, and the parents love the real-time reporting aspect.


by Janice Penix, Education Reporter
Story Date: 11/16/2005
The Courier, Russellville, AR
Copyright 2005, Russellville Newspapers, Inc.

GREELEY, COLO. (October 26, 2005) This school year, the nations sixth-largest district has the ability to instantly record and communicate student data that can be used by the entire school community to improve student performance. Broward County Public Schools is the latest Florida district to contract with Excelsior Software to deliver the Pinnacle assessment system district-wide. Excelsior now serves an estimated 60% of all Florida students, including both Broward and Miami-Dade public school districts.

Prior to the new five-year contract, several Broward County schools were already using the Pinnacle gradebook, but by implementing the system district-wide, all schools will be able to reap the benefits. The Pinnacle gradebook is an excellent technological tool for use by principals, teachers, students and parents for keeping track of all students progress on a real-time basis, said Dr. Earlean Smiley, Deputy Superintendent, Curriculum & Instruction, Broward County Public Schools. This 24/7 technology provides instant access to every students grades and test scores in a secure environment, allowing for prompt adjustments to be made in curriculum and instruction as needed to escalate performance and enhance the educational experience for everyone involved in the process.

Some of the largest districts in the nation are consistently choosing Excelsior Software for assessment management, including Broward, Miami-Dade, and Montgomery County (Md.). The Pinnacle Systems unparalleled scalability plus its ability to fully centralize complex data sources and address the unique needs of large school districts have proven to be key determinants for a growing number of district-wide implementations.

Drawing actionable conclusions from student data in order to transform student performance is so critical, noted William Zaggle, CEO of Excelsior Software. We serve over 1,000 different districts of all sizes and budgets, yet each of those districts essentially has a common goal: to provide technology solutions that support their teachers, engage students in their own education, and ultimately raise student achievement. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work toward fulfilling those goals with the educators of Broward county.

Teachers using the electronic gradebook component of the Pinnacle System consistently cite the significant time savings afforded by the technology tool, allowing for more time to be spent on direct classroom instruction. District staff can also automate time-consuming administrative tasks, such as creating student rosters, collecting attendance and generating report cards.

At a school-wide or district-wide level, the Pinnacle System collects and manages the data from every teachers desktop, communicating student information to the larger school community including parents. The Pinnacle Internet Viewer application ensures that each district is keeping parents regularly informed about their childrens progress, attendance, discipline and important school events.

Excelsior will work closely with the Broward school district throughout the countywide deployment process, providing extensive training on implementation of the Pinnacle System. The remaining terms of the contract were not disclosed.