Publishing Giant Pearson Points to Tough Conditions in U.S. Education Market

By a number of recent accounts, the prospects for companies doing business with schools in the United States have brightened recently, with state and local governments slowly climbing out of gloomy doldrums of the "Great Recession" and its extended aftermath. But one of the biggest names in education, Pearson, recently described its own, recent performance in less favorable terms, saying its financial results had been "weaker than expected," particularly in North America.

In a trading update released in advance of a fuller report on its 2013 earnings next month, Pearson said that "cyclical, policy-related, and structural pressures" had