Vantaggi
This company began with a true mission for opening doors of access and equity for all learners through literacy and math instruction. The core products are really well made. The former leadership was stellar. The employee culture is historically one of hard work, professionalism, and fun.
Svantaggi
Imagine Learning is in a world of turmoil right now. The founders are all gone, investors have taken over, and they have sadly lost their core company values. They no longer treat their employees with respect. Increasing the profit margin is the only goal. For example, they just laid off dozens of people with no forewarning and no reason--and they did it on a group Zoom call where the announcement was publicly made during a ten minute Zoom meeting. No one-on-one conversations took place or attempts at reassigning employees to open positions. I have never seen a poorer display of professionalism in my entire career. They laid off professionals that had been with the company for 10+ years, who were widely respected, market experts, and continuously revenue generating. They are shifting job descriptions for dozens more employees who were hired to do functions that no longer exist. All of this happened right before the holidays. I have seen agreements with customers shifted in the middle of the fulfillment period because the customer success and professional development model changed. There was no regard or apology to customers, and in many cases, no notification whatsoever. Imagine Learning products have been plagued with technical breakdowns, features that are halfway developed, and reporting that does not align with standards in a meaningful or simple way for teachers. Their legacy benchmark assessment is skewed for upper grades and does not give accurate results from BOY to EOY. This issue has been known for at least four years and has been completely ignored and kept hush-hush from customers. Customer success managers exhaust themselves trying to show results from subpar products that don't yield readily available data. Now, the company is trying to hobble a plethora of products together, but there is no seamless access or integration between platforms. Weld North Education now encompasses about a dozen companies, and they have hijacked the Imagine Learning name (which used to have such a good reputation) and put the cutthroat leadership of Edgenuity in charge. Soon, they will learn that if your employees aren't happy, your customers won't be either. Buyer beware: make sure you know which products you are purchasing (what they used to be called and what the history of that company/product is), what the support model is, and what the training looks like.