California

Pearson, the only company to have handled Texas' public school standardized tests, probably won't be running the next four years of STAAR. The Texas Education Agency decided to offer most of a new testing contract to rival ETS.

Whether students, teachers or school officials will notice the change is a question state officials declined to answer Monday.

If the contract is signed, Education Testing Service will coordinate the testing program and develop, administer, score and report results of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness

Linda K. Zecher, HMH's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We began 2015 on solid footing as we executed against our growth strategy. We remain the clear leader within K-12 adoption school districts thus far in 2015 and have continued to build momentum in key growth areas. As recently announced, we believe our planned acquisition of the EdTech business of Scholastic will enhance our ability to drive value for our shareholders by strengthening our core business and accelerating growth in adjacent markets.

A US court-appointed watchdog tasked with ensuring Apple sticks to its e-book price-fixing settlement promises says the iThing giant is not playing ball.

In a report [PDF] submitted to the New York Southern District Court, external compliance monitor Michael Bromwich claims Apple has not cooperated with his efforts to examine its policies and training programs to prevent future antitrust violations.

"Despite the progress we have made since October, we have also experienced significant setbacks," Bromwich wrote in the report, which covers the six months to the end of February.

If you're not on commission or the bonus track at Bertelsmann's toddling Penguin Random House megapublisher, there'll be a nice tip for you come April 17: An extra $750 in your paycheck, compliments of CEO Markus Dohle. "We are all proud of the positive impact inherent in what we do at Penguin Random House by publishing the best books and connecting them to readers," Dohle wrote in a memo to staff released Tuesday morning along with Bertelsmann's 2014 earnings. "This is our moment."

Lumen Learning has raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by the Oregon Angel Fund, with the Portland Seed Fund, Seattle's Alliance of Angels, and local investors Ray Henderson, David Mills and Tom Rubin also participating.

Lumen Learning was founded in 2012 by Kim Thanos, an edtech strategist, and David Wiley, an adjunct faculty at Brigham Young University. Thanos says a new textbook and online homework platform for a beginning college-level Algebra course typically costs $150. Lumen Learning currently offers them for $10.

Indiana appears ready to ditch the company that creates ISTEP after years of testing problems, but the cost of delivering Indiana's state tests could go way up if it does.

British-owned Pearson, another giant testing company, won the state's bid for a $38 million two-year contract to give the ISTEP test starting next spring over CTB-McGraw Hill, according to awards released today by the Indiana Department of Administration. California-based CTB-McGraw Hill has created ISTEP since the test's inception in 2009. The company had a four-year, $95 million contract to create ISTEP that expired last year.