Harcourt Assessment
Encyclopedia
Harcourt Assessment was a company that published and distributed educational and psychological assessment tools and therapy resources and provided educational assessment and data management services for national, state, district and local assessments. On January 30, 2008, Harcourt Assessment was merged into Pearson
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...

's Assessment & Information
Pearson Assessment & Information
The Assessment & Information group of Pearson is a division of Pearson Education, a business of Pearson PLC. The group is a provider of assessment and education data management services.- Businesses :...

 group after being acquired from Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier is a publisher and information provider operating in the science, medical, legal, risk and business sectors. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE 100 and FT500 Global company...

 for $950 million.

History

Harcourt Assessment's history dates to the early part of the 20th century. Although the company name derives from Harcourt Brace & Company
Harcourt Trade Publishers
Harcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.In 2007, the U.S...

, which was established in 1919, the corporate heritage goes back to 1905 and the founding of World Book Company. Many of the educational products produced by Harcourt Assessment originated at World Book. The psychological assessments originated at The Psychological Corporation, which was founded in 1921.

Harcourt Brace & Company (1919)

Alfred Harcourt
Alfred Harcourt
Alfred Harcourt was an American Publisher, Compiler and Founder of Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919....

 and Donald Brace
Donald Brace
Donald Clifford Brace was an American Publisher and Founder of Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919....

 were friends at Columbia University in New York, and both worked for Henry Holt & Company before founding their own publishing company in 1919. Harcourt Brace & Company
Harcourt (publisher)
Harcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.In 2007, the U.S...

 published the works of a number of world renowned writers, including Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...

, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

 and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

.

By 1960, Harcourt Brace led the market in high school textbook publishing, but had little presence in the elementary school market. That year, William Jovanovich, who had become president of the company in 1954, took the company public and merged Harcourt Brace & Company with World Book Company to create Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

This was a strategic move that had a long-term impact on the company because World Book was an established elementary textbook publisher and a test publisher.

In 1970, the company became known as Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ), with William Jovanovich as chairman. That same year, the company acquired The Psychological Corporation. Under Jovanovich’s leadership, the company diversified into non-publishing businesses such as insurance and business consulting. It also bought several theme parks -- including SeaWorld
SeaWorld
SeaWorld is a United States chain of marine mammal parks, oceanariums, and animal theme parks owned by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. The parks feature captive orca, sea lion, and dolphin shows and zoological displays featuring various other marine animals. There are operations in Orlando,...

, which it acquired in 1976 for $46 million. The company divested its theme park division in 1989 for $1.1 billion.

World Book Company (1905)

World Book Company opened its first office in Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...

 in 1905 and published English-language educational materials for schools in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

. The company later moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where it became a test publisher. Much of the company’s success was based on the work of Arthur S. Otis, who was best known for the intelligence tests he developed for the U.S. Army. Millions of World War I draftees took Otis’ tests
Otis-Lennon School Ability Test
The Otis–Lennon School Ability Test , published by the successor of Harcourt Assessment — Pearson Education, Inc., a subsidiary of Pearson PLC — is a test of abstract thinking and reasoning ability of children pre-K to 18...

.

World Book Company became the first publisher of group-administered tests measuring mental ability when it published Otis’ Group Intelligence Scale in 1918. Otis joined World Book in 1921. By the time World Book merged with Harcourt Brace in 1960, it had a portfolio of educational tests, including the Stanford Achievement Test (1923), the Metropolitan Achievement Test (1932) and the Otis Mental Ability Test (1936).

World Book Company was not related to World Book, Inc.
World Book Encyclopedia
The World Book Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia published in the United States. It is self-described as "the number-one selling print encyclopedia in the world." The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, and...

, the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

-based publisher of encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

s and other reference books.

The Psychological Corporation (1921)

Psychologist James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science...

 founded The Psychological Corporation in New York in 1921. Cattell was a leading figure in psychology and was the president of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

, as well as founder and editor of Scientific Monthly
Scientific monthly
Scientific Monthly was a science magazine published from 1915 to 1957. Psychologist James McKeen Cattell was the original founder and editor. In 1957 Scientific Monthly was absorbed by Science....

 and head of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

’s psychology department. At age 60, when Columbia dismissed him because of his public opposition to the draft in World War I, Cattell decided to pursue his interest in publishing. He joined forces with two former graduate students, Robert Sessions Woodworth
Robert S. Woodworth
Robert Sessions Woodworth was an influential American academic psychologist of the first half of the twentieth century. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia, his textbook Psychology: A study of mental life, which appeared first in 1921, went through many editions and was the first introduction to...

 and Edward Lee Thorndike
Edward Thorndike
Edward Lee "Ted" Thorndike was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on animal behavior and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology...

.

Both were eminent psychologists, and Thorndike was regarded as the foremost authority on the analysis and measurement of learning. The three men started a business to market psychological tests and related materials to educational, corporate and government clients. In 1939, the company published the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scales. David Wechsler
David Wechsler
David "Wex" Wechsler was a leading American psychologist. He developed well-known intelligence scales, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children .-Biography:...

 was a former student of Woodworth at Columbia University.

In 1970, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich acquired The Psychological Corporation and in 1976, merged its educational testing department, acquired from World Book Company in 1960, into The Psychological Corporation.

In the 1980s and 1990s, The Psychological Corporation (TPC) expanded through a number of acquisitions. In 1986, the company acquired Merrill Publishing’s test division with its portfolio of tests for language, speech and hearing. In 1993, it acquired Cognitronics Corporation. In 1994, the company acquired Communication Skill Builders/Therapy Skill Builders and its therapy products for speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and physical therapists.

In 1983, The Psychological Corporation moved from New York to Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. When the company moved to San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

, in 1985, it established its own operational services, including customer service, warehouse, distribution, information technology, scoring and reporting services.

In order to establish a stronger identity for its educational assessment products, and to link them more closely to the Harcourt name, The Psychological Corporation’s education testing unit was branded as Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement in 1995. The name was shortened in 1999 to Harcourt Educational Measurement.

Harcourt General, Harcourt, Inc. and Harcourt Assessment, Inc.

In 1991, General Cinema Corporation, a diversified company that operated retailers such as Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus, formerly Neiman-Marcus, is a luxury specialty retail department store operated by the Neiman Marcus Group in the United States. The company is headquartered in the One Marcus Square building in Downtown Dallas, Texas, and competes with other department stores such as Saks Fifth...

 and Bergdorf Goodman
Bergdorf Goodman
Bergdorf Goodman is a luxury goods department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The company was founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and was later owned and managed by Edwin Goodman, and later his son Andrew Goodman....

, as well as a national chain of movie theaters, acquired Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for more than $1.5 billion. In 1993, General Cinema Corporation renamed itself Harcourt General and restored the publishing division’s name to the historic Harcourt Brace & Company. At the end of the year, Harcourt General divested its cinema division.

In 1999, Harcourt General divested its retail division and shortened the publishing division’s name to Harcourt, Inc. That same year, Harcourt, Inc. adopted the brand name Harcourt Assessment for its testing businesses. At the time, Harcourt Assessment comprised The Psychological Corporation, which was known as the clinical division, and Harcourt Educational Measurement, which was known as the education division.

In late 2003, the testing business legally changed its name to Harcourt Assessment, Inc., and unified its two divisions into one operating company. The company retired the two division names – Harcourt Educational Measurement and The Psychological Corporation – although it retained “PsychCorp” as a brand imprint for select products.

Reed Elsevier Group plc

In 2001, the Anglo-Dutch publishing company Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier is a publisher and information provider operating in the science, medical, legal, risk and business sectors. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE 100 and FT500 Global company...

 acquired Harcourt General and Harcourt, Inc., including the business then known as Harcourt Assessment, Inc. Harcourt Assessment encountered two straight years with mass layoffs as a result of poor management and a failed strategy to expand into the state assessment market. In January 2006, more than 70 workers were laid off. Shortly after the layoffs, division president Jeff Galt left the company. Then again in January 2007, 122 workers lost their jobs. On February 15, 2007, Reed Elsevier announced its intention to sell its education arm, Harcourt Education, of which Harcourt Assessment is a part of. According to Reed Chief Executive Crispin Davis, "This is essentially a strategic decision that we want to focus more sharply on our three existing businesses ... with better growth rates".

Pearson Education plc

On May 4, 2007, Pearson
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...

, the international education and information company, announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from Reed Elsevier for $950m in cash. The sale of the two units left Reed Elsevier with most of Harcourt Education still to sell, comprising its large U.S. textbook business and a number of supplemental publishing businesses. Pearson already held a market-leading position in the U.S. textbook market and would not be interested in the main Harcourt business on account of regulatory concerns. Reed stated that it expected to complete the sale in the second half of the year and would use the funds raised to return cash to shareholders.

On January 30, 2008, Pearson completed the acquisition of Harcourt Assessment, Inc., having obtained all necessary regulatory approvals. Doug Kubach, president of Pearson's Assessment & Information
Pearson Assessment & Information
The Assessment & Information group of Pearson is a division of Pearson Education, a business of Pearson PLC. The group is a provider of assessment and education data management services.- Businesses :...

 group, led the integration of Harcourt Assessment into Pearson.

Products

  • Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)
    Beck Depression Inventory
    The Beck Depression Inventory , created by Dr. Aaron T. Beck, is a 21-question multiple-choice self-report inventory, one of the most widely used instruments for measuring the severity of depression...

  • Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS)
    Beck Hopelessness Scale
    The Beck Hopelessness Scale is a 20-item self-report inventory developed by Dr. Aaron T. Beck that was designed to measure three major aspects of hopelessness: feelings about the future, loss of motivation, and expectations...

  • Bracken School Ability Assessment
  • Differential Ability Scales
    Differential Ability Scales
    The Differential Ability Scales is a nationally normed , and individually administered battery of cognitive and achievement tests...

  • Gifted Rating Scales
    Gifted Rating Scales
    The Gifted Rating Scale is a scholastic assessment for school children. It is used mostly for Gifted & Talented admissions. It is administered by a teacher who knows the child well...

  • Hayling and Brixton tests
    Hayling and Brixton tests
    The Hayling and Brixton tests are neuropsychological tests of executive function created by psychologists Paul W. Burgess and Tim Shallice.It is composed of two tests, the Hayling Sentence Completion Test and the Brixton Spatial Awareness Test....

  • Miller Analogies Test (MAT)
    Miller Analogies Test
    The Miller Analogies Test is a standardized test used primarily for graduate school admissions in the USA. Created and still published by Harcourt Assessment, the MAT consists of 120 questions in 60 minutes ....

  • NEPSY
    NEPSY
    NEPSY is a series of neuropsychological tests authored by Marit Korkman, Ursula Kirk and Sally Kemp, that are used in various combinations to assess neuropsychological development in children ages 3–16 years in six functional domains...

  • Otis-Lennon School Ability Test
    Otis-Lennon School Ability Test
    The Otis–Lennon School Ability Test , published by the successor of Harcourt Assessment — Pearson Education, Inc., a subsidiary of Pearson PLC — is a test of abstract thinking and reasoning ability of children pre-K to 18...

  • Pharmacy College Admission Test
    Pharmacy College Admission Test
    The Pharmacy College Admission Test is a standardized test administered to prospective pharmacy school students by Harcourt Assessment, Inc. The test is divided into seven sections to be taken in approximately four and a half hours. These sections include Verbal Ability, Quantitative Ability,...

  • Raven's Progressive Matrices
    Raven's Progressive Matrices
    Raven's Progressive Matrices are non-verbal multiple choice measures of the reasoning component of Spearman's g , which is often referred to as general intelligence. The tests were originally developed by John C. Raven in 1936...

  • Stanford Achievement Test
  • Versant Spoken English Test
    Versant
    The Versant suite of tests are computerized tests of spoken language available from Pearson. Versant tests were the first fully automated tests of spoken language to use advanced speech processing technology to assess the spoken language skills of non-native speakers. The Versant language suite...

  • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
    Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
    The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale intelligence quotient tests are the primary clinical instruments used to measure adult and adolescent intelligence. The original WAIS was published in February 1955 by David Wechsler, as a revision of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale...

  • Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
    Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
    The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children , developed by Dr. David Wechsler, is an individually administered intelligence test for children between the ages of 6 and 16 inclusive that can be completed without reading or writing...

  • Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)
    Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence
    The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence is an intelligence test designed for children ages 2 years 6 months to 7 years 3 months developed by David Wechsler in 1967. It is a descendent of the earlier Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children...

  • The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
     
    x
    OK