SCORE! Educational Centers (commonly SCORE!), was owned by
Kaplan, Inc., which is a subsidiary of
Graham Holdings Company, and was a United States provider of customized supplementary
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
and one-on-three tutoring services for
children
A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...
in
kindergarten
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...
through
ninth grade
Ninth grade (also 9th grade or grade 9) is the ninth or tenth Educational stage, year of Formal education, formal or compulsory education in some countries. It is generally part of middle school or secondary school depending on country. Students i ...
. SCORE! offered materials in multiple subjects, including
reading,
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
,
language arts, and
writing
Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...
. In 2009, all SCORE! centers were closed or converted to Kaplan centers.
At its height, SCORE! had over 165 centers in twelve
states, including
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
,
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
,
Connecticut
Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
,
New York,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
,
Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
, and
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
, and also in the
District of Columbia
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...
, and in Israel.
Overview
SCORE! employs distinguished and unique methods of helping students meet various academic goals, as described below:
Positive reinforcement
SCORE! employed methods of
positive reinforcement to help students set and achieve academic goals. After ten-minute computer lessons, called "learning workouts", students obtained SCORE! cards, small
magnetic squares
In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...
emblazoned with the SCORE! logo, which were earned for scoring over 70% on a lesson or making
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...
shots. Students saved these cards at home or redeemed them for
prize
A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people (such as sporting teams and organizations) to recognize and reward their actions and achievements. s (balls, Disneyland tickets, etc.). Because students spent most of their time at the computer, basketball shots broke up the lessons and allowed students to let out active energy. Shots were awarded for doing well on lessons or completing a full hour of lessons. The SCORE! coaches also awarded students with
high five
The high five is a hand gesture whereby two people simultaneously raise one hand and slap the flat of their palm against the other. The gesture is often preceded verbally by a phrase like "Give me five", "High five", or "Up top". Its meaning var ...
s. With help from their SCORE! coaches, students set long-term goals in an academic subject, measured against national curriculum standards. Students tracked 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 attained bronze, silver, gold, and even 'top of the mountain' goals when they completed a certain number of sessions, advancing them up a wooden mountain to the summit."
Positive reinforcement was a strong part of the
corporate culture, as documented in
Harvard Business School Case Studies in 1999 and 2000.
[Harvard Business Online](_blank)
/ref>
Personalization in educational software
By developing a retail business model to deliver educational software
Educational software is a term used for any computer software that is made for an educational purpose. It encompasses different ranges from language learning software to classroom management software to reference software. The purpose of all th ...
for a monthly fee, SCORE! made available to individual consumers access to a large personalization
Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals. It is sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. Personalization involves collecting data on individuals, ...
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) 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. 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. 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.
History
Startup years: 1992-1996
Company founder, Alan Tripp, a graduate of Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, 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, and addressed customer attrition issues in the model by developing SCORE! Mountain.", the company's first long-term customer loyalty program
A loyalty program or rewards program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of one or more businesses associated with the program.
Single-company vs. coalition programs
Loyalty progr ...
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, 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 Kelley, 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 US$10 million. In 1999, Tripp went on to found another educational services business, InsideTrack focused on coaching college students.
A decade of national expansion: 1997-2006
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 in Oakland, CA.
By 2005, the learning centers had helped more than 250,000 students since it first opened its doors in Palo Alto, CA.
By 2006, the centers served 82,000 students per year. The division headquarters moved again to Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, IL.
Decline and demise: 2007-2009
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, 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. The closures were focused primarily on centers that solely offered only one of Score!'s programs (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. By the end of the year, Score! operated 80 centers in eight states.
Score revenues declined 41% in the first quarter of 2009, and operating losses at Score increased from $3.7 million in the first quarter of 2008 to $17.6 million in the first quarter of 2009, inclusive of restructuring charges. At the end of March 2009, the Washington Post Company approved a plan to offer tutoring services, previously provided at Score, in Kaplan test prep centers. In conjunction with this plan, 14 existing Score centers will be converted into Kaplan test prep centers and the remaining 64 Score centers will be closed. The plan is expected to be substantially completed by the end of the second quarter of 2009. Washington Post recorded $11.5 million in asset write-downs, severance and accelerated depreciation of fixed assets in the first quarter of 2009, including a $9.2 million write-down on Score's software product. Additional operating losses of approximately $19.2 million are expected to be recorded during the remainder of 2009; these estimated losses are related to the wind-down period of the 64 Score centers to be closed, including $15.0 million related to lease obligations, severance and accelerated depreciation of fixed assets. Poor upper regional management and internal weak structures eventually led to a class action lawsuit for violating labor laws brought on by Score! employees which settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
See also
* Inquiry education
*Philosophy of education
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It also examines the concepts and presuppositions of education theories. It is an interdisciplinary fiel ...
*Personalization
Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals. It is sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. Personalization involves collecting data on individuals, ...
External links
Kaplan website
References and external sources
* Seels, B. (1989)
Educational Technology, May, 11–15.
* Niemiec, R.P. & Walberg, H.T. (1989)
Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 21(3), 263–276.
* Wyatt, Edward,
The New York Times, December 22, 1999.
* Mayes, Erin,
The Campell Reporter, April 18, 2001.
*
Heller Report on Educational Technology Markets, December 1, 2002.
* Sherwood, Emily, Ph.D.
Education Update Online, May 2007.
* Adler, Christine,
New Workbook Series Aims at Avoiding the Academic 'Summer Slide'
NYMetroParents, October 13, 2007.
{{Authority control
Educational software companies
Education companies established in 1992
Defunct companies based in Chicago