Taking a Megabyte of the Market : Technology: Computer Curriculum has seen its growth explode as classrooms go multimedia.

While Ron Fortune worked toward his education Ph.D in the 1970s, he spent three years teaching in a Berkeley public school, trying to hit upon methods that might help his students.

Computers, he concluded, made a positive difference.

So, after earning his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1979, Fortune became a salesman for Computer Curriculum Corp., a small Silicon Valley company producing computer-based learning systems. The career move surprised his friends, who pictured Fortune as a school administrator like his older brother, Rex, a former superintendent in Inglewood.

But Fortune gambled wisely on a business that is exploding as technology turns the classroom into a multimedia experience. In its most recent fiscal year, Computer Curriculum’s revenue jumped 24% to $61 million, and, at age 44, Fortune has become its chief executive.

The company is owned by New York-based Paramount Communications Inc., the world’s largest publisher of educational books. Seeking to protect and increase its educational market share, Paramount bought the company for about $75 million in 1990.

In revenue, Computer Curriculum is still a small contributor: For the year ended Oct. 31, the Sunnyvale-based firm accounted for 8% of the $761 million generated by Paramount’s education publishing business.

But it is a bright star nonetheless to Paramount Chairman Martin Davis, who is pushing all of his divisions to harness technology. In December, Davis approved the establishment of a “media kitchen” in nearby Palo Alto to help cut across divisional lines in developing prototypes. Paramount also set up a licensing group to exploit more fully its trademarks and copyrights.

At Computer Curriculum, spending on product development has increased eightfold since Paramount bought the company. An entire marketing division has sprung up where once there was only a sales force. Employment has increased 49%. And, most significant, new software is emerging with the Paramount imprimatur of licensed characters and distribution muscle.

For example, Paramount owns the interactive rights to characters developed by children’s author Richard Scarry, so Computer Curriculum has developed a product line for the preschool set using the popular characters. The series is targeted primarily for home use--a first for Computer Curriculum, which lacked the resources to crack the home market prior to its acquisition. The Scarry product will begin shipping later this spring.

Computer Curriculum has also teamed up with the Smithsonian Institution to create products for middle schools and homes, including “Amazonia” and “The Virtual BioPark,” due out later this year.

In sales, Computer Curriculum appears to trail only Jostens Inc., the industry leader, which has been acquiring a number of computer-based learning system companies. Computer Curriculum has about 5,000 schools as customers, while Jostens has an estimated 7,500 of the nation’s 100,000 schools, according to Fortune.

The explosive growth comes more than two decades after Computer Curriculum was founded by two prominent California academicians. Remarkably, the founders built the company without help from venture capitalists.

Patrick Suppes, a Stanford University philosophy professor, and Richard Atkinson, a psychology professor who is now chancellor of UC San Diego, were colleagues at Stanford when they started the company in 1967 at the behest of the U.S. Office of Education, which wanted to pursue “computer-assisted instruction,” Atkinson says.

The professors used federal grants to get the company started, then obtained an interest-free loan from Hewlett-Packard, which was interested in the education market. Other manufacturers expressed support, but their interest faded as it became clear that computers were still prohibitively expensive for most school districts. In those early days, Atkinson recalls, some schools even resorted to running Computer Curriculum’s programs on teletypewriters.

Atkinson left Palo Alto in 1975 to become deputy director of the National Science Foundation, but Suppes continued to manage the company, while also teaching. (Atkinson gradually reduced his stake to 10%.)

By the time Ron Fortune joined the firm in 1979, the payroll boasted about 60 employees and personal computers were beginning to appear in classrooms. Fortune’s sales territory was Northern California, but he eventually became manager of the entire sales force, and later was chosen by Suppes to become chief operating officer.

In 1987, the company prepared to make an initial stock offering, but scrapped the plan when the stock market crashed. Three years later, Suppes--still the controlling shareholder--accepted Paramount’s $75-million offer.

Today, about 300 full-time employees are engaged in product development for every grade level in math, science, reading and other subjects. Elementary schools continue to be the biggest buyers, but Computer Curriculum expects a boom in the preschool and adult markets thanks to the Clinton Administration’s pledge to focus on the needs of disadvantaged preschoolers and unemployed adults who need job training.

Computer-based learning systems hold increasing appeal as a tutor for parents, teachers and taxpayers who chafe at the disparate skills found in the classroom.

In November, Computer Curriculum unveiled an ambitious product called “SuccessMaker,” which guarantees that it “will accurately predict the amount of time students need to achieve the curriculum goals set by their teachers in selected mathematics and reading courses.” The company just began shipping the product in February, so the guarantee--which requires a full year of activity--has yet to be tested.

But motivation remains a problem for some children, who “doodle” on their computers as readily as on paper.

Such is the case at Pasadena’s Woodrow Wilson Middle School, which is field-testing Computer Curriculum’s latest product. Each student should be able to work 50 to 60 math problems in an hour, but the attention of a few wanders. An eighth-grader named David attempts only 13 problems, getting four correct answers. Still, he complains that the system is too easy.

To such students, lab teacher Nancy Davis says: “Prove it! Get it right. It’ll move you up; I’ll move you up.”

Nearly $250,000 went into the 40-workstation lab, most of it from federal programs to help educationally disadvantaged students. Most of the 700 students using the Wilson lab need remedial help because their work is below grade-level.

The “SuccessMaker” program measures their ability over 10 lessons, before they are assigned to individualized courses. In subsequent lessons, students advance (or regress) two grade levels as they tackle various problems.

With the punch of a button, students can get extra help or find out how many problems they’ve answered correctly. After class is over, a printout lets teachers see how well the pupil performed and at what grade level.