Dive Brief:

• In the past several weeks, Pearson has sold off its media-related business to refocus on its education ventures.
• The company has faced some setbacks in its testing business in particular, with troubled rollouts of federally-mandated tests and its shrinking hold on the market.
• But Pearson and others seem unfazed by those setbacks; the private education industry is booming, with increased investment even as far abroad as China.

Dive Insight:

Roughly $1 trillion is spent on education in the United States, where Pearson estimates that it does $5 billion in education-related business. Despite the road bumps of the past several years, the company still holds a prominent position in the education industry. In fact, a lack of competition may be a factor in its troubled image, NPR reports. When slack bidding processes put forth products that educators and families are unhappy with, Pearson makes a good target. And it already profits from unpopular testing policies, making it more vulnerable.

In part due to pressures and the shifting market, Pearson has begun to focus more on the educational quality of its products. As NPR reports, the approach is starting to look more like “Invest in products and services that can prove they do what they say on the label.” It’s an approach that is not as widespread as it could be in the ed tech industry, which has struggled with bloated products that fail to perform as educators need them to. In many cases, innovation has outstripped research on which tools make a difference.

Some experts predict that increased competition could encourage others to follow in Pearson’s footsteps, as well as keep the company's attention on learning-focused products that positively impact student learning. Even Pearson agrees. "It would be good for outcomes to have many people doing this,” Amar Kumar, a senior vice president at Pearson, told NPR.