Ignite! Learning, Inc. is an educational software and hardware company co-founded in 1999 by Texas businessman
Neil Bush
Neil Mallon Bush (born January 22, 1955) is an American businessman and investor. He is the fourth of six children of former President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush (née Pierce). His five siblings are George W. Bush, the 43rd President o ...
and a year later Ken Leonard. Neil is a brother of Former President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
and Former Florida Governor
Jeb Bush
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. Bush, who grew up in Houston, was the second son of former President George H. W. Bush ...
, and son of former President
George Herbert Walker Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
. Alan Davis resigned as the President and CEO in November, 2009. Ken Leonard is the current acting CEO.
Ignite! Learning offers middle school curricula in social studies, science, and mathematics. The company's instructional design is based on
constructivism
Constructivism may refer to:
Art and architecture
* Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes
* Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...
,
differentiated instruction, and Howard Gardner's writing on
multiple intelligences
The theory of multiple intelligences proposes the differentiation of human intelligence into specific modalities of intelligence, rather than defining intelligence as a single, general ability. The theory has been criticized by mainstream psycho ...
to appeal to multiple learning styles.
Finances
To fund Ignite!, Neil Bush and others raised $23 million from U.S. investors, including his parents,
Barbara Bush
Barbara Pierce Bush (June 8, 1925 – April 17, 2018) was First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, as the wife of President George H. W. Bush, and the founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. She previously w ...
and
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; p ...
, as well as businessmen from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, the British Virgin Islands and the United Arab Emirates, according to documents filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against mark ...
. As of 2006, at least $2 million had come from Taiwanese interests that had given Neil Bush a job consulting for a semiconductor manufacturer, and at least $3 million came from Saudi interests. A foundation linked to Reverend
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon (; born Yong Myung Moon; 6 January 1920 – 3 September 2012) was a Korean religious leader, also known for his business ventures and support for conservative political causes. A messiah claimant, he was the founder of the Unif ...
donated $1 million for a research project by the company in Washington, D.C.-area schools.
In 2002, Ignite! entered into a partnership with a Mexican company,
Grupo Carso
Grupo Carso is a Mexican global conglomerate company owned by Carlos Slim. It was formed in 1990 after the merger of Corporación Industrial Carso and Grupo Inbursa. The name Carso stands for Carlos Slim and Soumaya Domit de Slim, his late wife. ...
to outsource many software and product development functions. Regarding the deal, Ignite! President (then CFO) Ken Leonard stated, "That's turned out to be great." Ignite! laid off 42% of its in-house workforce (21 individuals) in preparation for the partnership. Leonard said that outsourcing production will give it the resources to develop additional course software more quickly, and that the company wants to develop an entire middle school curriculum featuring the basics of language arts, math and science.
Deceased Russian billionaire expatriate
Boris Berezovsky had been an investor in Bush's Ignite! program since at least 2003.
In December 2003, a ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...
'' Style article said that Ignite! was paying Neil Bush a salary of $180,000 per year.
Sales
In March 2006, Leonard said that in the past six to eight months, the company had hired national sales representatives across the country — in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — in order to significantly expand beyond Texas. He also said that about 80 percent of the company's customers were from Texas as of that date.
One of the company's products, Curriculum on Wheels (COW), a purple multimedia machine on wheels that offers interactive video presentations on a variety of topics in social studies and science, was first produced in 2005.
According to the Ignite! Learning website, three different COW models are available: Science, Social Studies, and a "SuperCOW" that contains both curricula. Although specific pricing for each model has not been published by the firm, some COWS are reported to cost about $3,800 each.
An annual maintenance fee of about $1,000 each has also been reported for some COWS.
The company has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005 and expects 2006 revenue of $5 million.
As of October 2006, over 13 U.S. school districts (out of over 14,000 school districts nationwide) have used federal funds made available through the
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based educati ...
of 2001 in order to buy Ignite's products at $3,800 apiece.
Another company product is a library of 9 educational science DVDs called "Squibs".
In July, 2008 Ignite! released ION, a
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics ...
-based system. At this time the company claimed to provide middle school curriculum to more than 250 school districts, 10,000 classrooms, and 300,000 students.
Effectiveness of learning programs
In 2009, Ignite! Math was a finalist for an Association of Educational Publishers Curriculum Award.
The Winter 2008-2009 issue of The Journal of Research on Technology and Education, a peer-reviewed juried academic journal, included a study on the effectiveness of Ignite!'s Early American History course and found a statistically significant improvement in achievement.
Salon magazine, on April 12, 2002 reported that Ignite!'s product is not well known in the education industry field, but it does get some respectful reviews. "They're new entrants in the market," says Keith Kruger of the Consortium for School Networking, "but from what I know, it's a serious product based on some good research."
One reported success for the company is Mendez Middle School in
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
, a predominantly poor and Hispanic school. After three years of using the company's Early American History program, the principal of the school said in 2003 that the percentage who passed the Texas eighth-grade history increased from 50 to 87 percent.
In 2004, an HISD-funded external evaluation of Ignite Learning found that teachers gave an older version of the product generally positive marks. "Teachers also found it to be effective in improving student understanding of history, engaging students in the learning process, and to a lesser degree, helping students pass the (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills)," the study said.
In August 2006, Alamo Junior High Principal Jeff Horner said he first saw COWs at a Texas Association of School Boards convention in Austin. "We're enthused with them so far. It's a very unique way to get curriculum across in an interactive way," Horner said.
Promotional actions by Bush family
In 2002, then company president Neil Bush received a mixed response when he spoke of education while at
Whitney High School (a school for gifted students in
Cerritos, California
Cerritos (Spanish for "Little hills") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and is one of several cities that constitute the Gateway Cities of southeast Los Angeles County. It was incorporated on April 24, 1956. As of 20 ...
). Among the points of his speech, he opined: "We create these prisonlike environments, then we take our hunter-warrior types and label them attention-deficit disordered and put them on drugs."
(Bush has often advocated for less use of
ritalin and other mind-altering drugs on children.) He added that: "Ignite! is designed to make learning fun for "hunter-warrior" kids who don't like reading."
In February 2004, the Houston school board agreed to accept $115,000 in charitable donations from businesses and individuals who specified the money be spent on Ignite's learning programs. The money came from the HISD Foundation, a philanthropic group that helps support the district. Neil Bush and Ignite! company officials helped solicit the donations for the foundation.
In early 2006, Ignite Learning announced that Barbara Bush had donated funds to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund (a charity established by former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton), with instructions that the money be used to purchase "COWs" ("Curriculum on Wheels") from Ignite! for several economically disadvantaged schools.
In March 2006, Barbara Bush visited Fleming Middle School in Houston.
In August 2006, Neil Bush visited Alamo Junior High School, the 1,000th customer of Ignite! Learning.
References
Ignite! Learning Announces Promethean Partnership
External links
Company website
{{Authority control
Educational software companies