PrepMe: Adaptive learning, test-prep. This Chicago-Palo Alto team, which started the company in 2005, just got snapped up by a group called Ascend Learning, which is back by private equity powerhouse, Providence Equity Partners. The price wasn't announced. Providence, you'll recall, just swallowed Blackboard for $1.64 billion. But Ascend, which has only a veneer of a website, is parent of two (~$90 million each) publishing and assessment companies: JB Learning, formerly Jones & Bartlett Publishers and ATI Testing. PrepMe will apparently join ATI Testing.
