Our History

The Assessment & Information group of Pearson has a rich heritage. We are a division of Pearson Education, the largest business of Pearson, plc. Our business has grown organically and through mergers and acquisitions since Pearson first entered the assessment and testing market with the acquisition of NCS, Inc. in September 2000. Each of the predecessor businesses that have come together to form our group today has contributed to our legacy of innovation and market leadership. Since September 2000 we have grown to become the leading provider of assessment and education data management services in North America. Together with our sister companies (Edexcel, Pearson Language Testing, and Pearson VUE) Pearson is the leading and most innovative provider of assessment and education data management services in the world.Today Pearson’s Assessment & Information group is organized around eight businesses:

National Services: Serving the US federal government and national non-profit organizations involved in educational assessment and education reform

State Services: Serving state education agencies in the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico with outsourced K-12 educational assessment and data management services

Educational Assessment: Serving K-12 teachers, students, administrators, and parents with educational assessment, data management, and personalized learning solutions for schools and local education agencies.

Evaluation Systems: Serving teacher credentialing agencies of US states with licensing examinations and related services.

Clinical Assessment: Serving the global market for psychological, speech and language, and special needs assessments, for early childhood, for Response to Intervention, for talent assessment, in educational, clinical, government and corporate markets

School Systems: Student information systems and data analysis solutions that impact school and district performance

Edustructures: Enterprise solutions—based on education interoperability standards—for connecting and managing state and district education data systems.

Knowledge Technologies: Innovative technologies for automatically evaluating oral and written languages

Our Time By Year

1905	Educational Assessment	World Book Co. founded in Manilla to publish English-language educational materials for schools in the Philippines
1918	Educational Assessment	World Book Company becomes the first publisher of group-administered tests measuring mental ability when it published Arthur S. Otis' Group Intelligence Scale.
1921	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation founded in New York City by James Cattell, Robert Sessions Woodworth and Edward Lee Thorndike
1923	Educational Assessment	World Book Co. publishes the first edition of the Stanford Achievement Test
1932	Educational Assessment	World Book Co. publishes the first edition of the Metropolitan Achievement Test for use in New York City, beginning Pearson's 75+ year history supporting district-wide assessments for New York City Public Schools
1939	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation publishes the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scales
1949	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation publishes the first edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
1953	National Services	The Measurement Research Center founded by the University of Iowa under the direction of E. F. Lindquist to bring Optical Mark Reader (OMR) technology and data collection services to the education market.
1953	State Services	The Measurement Research Center is the first organization to successfully machine score a large scale assessment, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and Iowa Test of Educational Development (ITED), beginning Pearson's 56+ year history supporting state assessment programs
1959	National Services	The Measurement Research Center supports the launch of the ACT assessment program from American College Testing, beginning Pearson's 50+ year history supporting ACT
1960	Educational Assessment	World Book Co. acquired by Harcourt Brace. The Measurement Research Center begins its 49+ year relationship providing scoring services for the Stanford Achievement Test
1962	Clinical Assessment	National Computer Systems (NCS) founded by Harlan Ward in Minneapolis to provide scoring services for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), beginning Pearson's 47+ year history supporting supporting many leading psychological tests, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
1968	National & State Services	The Measurement Research Center acquired by Westinghouse Learning Corp.
	National Services	The Measurement Research Corporation scores the first National Evaluation of Student Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, beginning Pearson's 40+ year history of support for NAEP
	School Systems	Columbia Computing Ltd founded in Vancouver BC to launch The School System (TSS) student information system
1970	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation acquired by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ)
1972	Clinical Assessment	HBJ merges the educational testing department of World Book Co. into The Psychological Corporation
1972	Evaluation Systems	National Evaluation Systems is cofounded by William Gorth in Amherst MA
1976	Clinical & Educational Assessment	HBJ merges the educational testing department of World Book Co. into The Psychological Corporation
1976	Evaluation Systems	Evaluation Systems publishes the first customized, multi-field teacher certification testing program in the US for the state of Georgia
1979	State Services	The Measurement Research Center supports the launch of the first Texas testing program beginning Pearson's 30+ year history of support for the Texas Education Agency
1983	National & State Services	The Measurement Research Center acquired by National Computer Systems (NCS)
	School Systems	Tamarack Systems founded in Denver CO to launch the Osiris student information system. Chancery is founded in Burnaby British Columbia.
	Educational Assessment	The Psychological Corporate moves from NYC to Cleveland
1985	Educational Assessment	The Psychological Corporation moves to San Antonio and establishes its own operational services, including customer service, warehouse, distribution, information technology, scoring and reporting
1986	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation acquires the test division of Merrill Publishing Co. for its line of speech, language and hearing products
1989	School Systems	Columbia Computing joins the Macmillan McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company and is merged with CTB/McGraw-Hill
1993	School Systems	McGraw-Hill School Systems is separated from CTB/McGraw-Hill as an independent business unit focused on The School System, Osiris and Integrade
1994	Clinical Assessment	The Psychological Corporation acquires Communication Skill Builders/Therapy Skill Builders and its therapy products for speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists
1996	Evaluation Systems	College readiness test administered by computer in the US state of Texas
1997	School Systems	PowerSchool is founded in Rancho Cordova CA. National Computer Systems acquires Macro Educational Systems (SASIxp) and McGraw-Hill School Systems
1998	Evaluation Systems	Combined multiple-choice and constructed-response tests for 30 teacher certification tests in US state of Massachusetts
1998	Knowledge Technologies	Knowledge Analysis Technologies formed in Boulder CO by Thomas K Landauer, Darrell Laham and Peter Foltz to develop educational applications of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA).
2000	National & State Services, School Systems	National Computer Systems (NCS) acquired by Pearson
2001	State Services	Pearson pioneers secure online testing system for state exams
2001	Edustructures	Edustructures formed by Steve Curtis in Salt Lake City
2002	Clinical Assessments	The Psychological Corporation acquires French test publisher ECPA (Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée)
2002	Edustructures	Edustructures introduces the first SIF Zone Integration Server to the education market making standards based data integration possible.
2003	Clinical Assessments	The Psychological Corporation acquires Swets Test International from Dutch publisher Royal Swets & Zeitlinger, with operations in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom
2004	School Systems	Pearson acquires altonaED
	Clinical Assessments	The Psychological Corporation acquires Ordinate Corporation and its portfolio of spoken language proficiency assessments, and also acquires assets of J C Raven Ltd., including the Progressive Matrices and the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scales
	Educational Assessments	Pearson acquires Scholar, Inc. and launches PearsonInform
	Knowledge Technologies	Pearson acquires Knowledge Analysis Technologies
2005	National Services	Pearson introduces online distributed performance scoring for the College Board's new SAT Writing exam
	Clinical Assessments	Pearson acquires AGS Publishing
	Edustructures	Edustructures implements the first state-wide SIF compliant data systems.
2006	School Systems	PowerSchool and Chancery acquired by Pearson and merged into Pearson School Systems
	Clinical Assessments	The Psychological Corporation acquires Edformation, Inc. and its AIMSweb product. AIMSweb will provide customers with a complete Response to Intervention (RTI) solution
	Evaluation Systems	National Evaluation Systems acquired by Pearson
2007	School Systems	Pearson launches PowerTeacher
2007	Edustructures	Edustructures acquired by Pearson
2008	Clinical & Educational Assessments	The Psychological Corporation (Harcourt Assessment, Inc.) acquired by Pearson
	Evaluation Systems	Evaluation Systems is first to deliver the 45 tests of the teacher certification testing program completely by computer in the US state of Florida
	Knowledge Technologies	Ordinate is merged into Pearson Knowledge Technologies
2009	National Services	Pearson launches new computer-adaptive ACCUPLACER system for the College Board with auto-scored essays
	Clinical Assessments	Clinical Assessment opens office in India and Scandanivian operations expand with opening office in Denmark.
	Edustructures	The National Transcript Center acquired by Pearson and merged with Edustructures