Vanderbilt tie is a driver in ThinkLink sale to Discovery

Email | Print By Milt Capps

04-07-2006 4:28 PM — Discovery Communications Inc.'s acquisition of Nashville's ThinkLink Learning is an education-industry gambit that strengthens ThinkLink's partnership with researchers at Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, according to Jackie Shrago, formerly president and CEO of ThinkLink and now Discovery Education's senior vice president for educational assessment.

Terms of the sale were not announced, but Shrago said that she and 33 other ThinkLink employees "have a stake" in the new unit's performance. Discovery spokesperson Shermaze Ingram said in an interview today that ThinkLink will carry Discovery Education branding, in a manner yet to be determined. Ingram said ThinkLink is the first business of its type within two-year-old Discovery Education, which is itself a unit of Discovery Communications. The parent owns numerous media, education and related properties, including unitedstreaming.

Shrago told NashvillePost.com this afternoon that she and Discovery Education Executive Vice President Ron Reed have identified the Peabody partnership as strategically important to the future of Discovery's newly acquired Nashville unit. Shrago cited as an example ThinkLink's collaboration with special-education department Prof. Stephen Elliott, an expert in assessment methods for evaluating the academic performance of students with disabilities.

Peabody Dean Camilla Benbow said in a statement provided NashvillePost.com this afternoon, "One of the things that characterize Peabody is our commitment to moving the results of theoretical research into the field where it can benefit real learners. ThinkLink has offered an excellent model for doing this."

ThinkLink's six years of efforts to develop performance-assessment methodologies and services have coincided with dramatic increases in public scrutiny of the progress, or lack of it, of students within public-education systems, in particular. ThinkLink asserts "90% accuracy" in assessing student proficiency, mastery and average yearly performance (AYP), all measures that have become more familiar since the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001). ThinkLink's Predictive Assessment Series helps educators correlate results of diagnostic assessments with contents of the states' "high-stakes" student examinations.

A ThinkLink factsheet says that during the 2004-2005 school year, the company's assessment program was provided to about 1,000 schools and roughly 300,000 students, involving more than 2 million assessments.

ThinkLink was launched by Vanderbilt in 2000 as a for-profit company. Joe B. Wyatt, who was chancellor of Vanderbilt University for 18 years, served until the sale as chairman of ThinkLink's board of directors. Shrago said his future role, if any, has not been determined, but is under discussion. Wyatt was widely known during his term as chancellor as an advocate of using technology in support of teaching and learning. Several years ago, Peabody's architecturally acclaimed central-administration building was renamed The Wyatt Center.