Dive Brief:

• Renaissance Learning, Inc., a K-12 assessment and learning analytics company, is set to be acquired for $1.1 billion by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC from the Permira funds.  

• The Wisconsin-based education company uses 45 million assessments taken each year by students in more than one-third of U.S. schools to drive its assessment-based instruction and analytics.  

• According to the managing director at Hellman & Friedman, the private-equity firm plans to “help grow Renaissance’s impact globally through continued investment in products that make a difference in the classroom.”  ​

Dive Insight:

$1.1 billion is a lot of money. Specifically, it is a lot of money to be going to an assessment company — though not super surprising.  As “high-stakes testing” and “data-driven” continue to be buzzwords in the education lexicon, it’s no shock that businessmen and women outside of education see the value in this investment. If all public school students are taking these tests and all teachers are evaluated on the data acquired from them, having a hand in the process sounds like a good investment.