Игнитай! Learning: Американдық білім беру компаниясының тарихы мен қаржыландырылуы

American educational software company
Ignite! Learning, Inc. is an educational software and hardware company co founded in 1999 by Texas businessman Neil Bush and a year later Ken Leonard. Neil is a brother of Former President George W. Bush and Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush. 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, differentiated instruction, and Howard Gardner's writing on multiple intelligences to appeal to multiple learning styles.

To fund Ignite!, Neil Bush and others raised $23 million from U. S. investors, including his parents, Barbara Bush and George H. W. Bush, 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. 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 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 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 Style article said that Ignite! was paying Neil Bush a salary of $180,000 per year.

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. The company has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005 and expects 2006 revenue of $5 million.) have used federal funds made available through the No Child Left Behind Act 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 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.

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, 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 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. In August 2006, Neil Bush visited Alamo Junior High School, the 1,000th customer of Ignite! Learning.