Ferguson
A native of Ames, Iowa, Frank Ferguson moved to Massachusetts and cofounded Curriculum Associates in 1969. Curriculum Associates designs learning and assessment programs aimed at helping teachers better identify the areas their students succeed at and struggle with in order to improve how they teach them.
In the decades since, Frank Ferguson not only helped the company get out from the Newton garage it started in and become a “force in the educational publishing industry,” according to his son Paul Ferguson, but he made headlines for his charitable donations to other learning-based organizations and instilled a passion for life and improving education that his colleagues said continues to define the company culture to this day.
“He introduced me to a whole new approach on the way I saw life and work and the balance. Finding happiness was always something that he wanted us all to achieve, and he shared that with us on a daily basis,” his co-worker Sandy Batista said. “He had a mission to make people happy to make classrooms better and that was it. It was not about him, it was always about other people.”
A former Lincoln resident, Frank Ferguson is survived by his sisters Alice Holmes and Betsy Lockhart, his daughter Lorraine Weinberg and his sons Fred, Paul and Don
Ferguson, along with numerous nephews, nieces and grandchildren.
According to Paul Ferguson, his father had been battling cancer in the years leading up to his death.
“He was exemplary in many ways, but I think the most important thing was that he had an incredible appetite for life and for pursuing his passions,” Paul Ferguson said. “He knew what he wanted and he wouldn’t let anything get in the way of it, which was something that we saw every day.”
Frank Ferguson served as president of Curriculum Associates from 1976 until 2008, and then as the company’s chairman until 2017.
That year, he donated the vast majority of the company’s equity to his alma mater, Iowa State University, which supported several educational and charitable organizations including The Boston Foundation.
Valued at $93 million at the time, it was one of the largest gifts the university had ever received and was among the largest philanthropic gifts given that year. Curriculum Associates CEO Rob Waldron said the gift is now worth $200 million.
“Every moment being with Frank was a gift. He gave us knowledge, he told us stories, he gave us humor and lightheartedness, he gave his net worth to those in need. Every day he was giving,” said Waldron, who took over leadership of the company in 2008. “Hopefully we’ll take his work and go on and his legacy will continue. I think he was a visionary and a cultural icon.”
According to a company spokesperson, Frank Ferguson also created the Ferguson Education Leadership Fellowship in 2012, a 30-month postgraduate fellowship dedicated to, “bringing together traditional schools, charter schools and the for-profit educational technology industry to improve student learning.”
And in 2014, he received the Hall of Fame Award from the Prek-12 Learning Group division of the Association of American Publishers, their highest honor, which recognizes individuals whose contributions to the learning resource industry have greatly improved teaching and learning.
When speaking with The Sun, both Waldron and Batista described Frank Ferguson as someone with a zest for life, whose generosity, adventurousness and passion for learning infected all those around him.
“Frank was very adventurous, it seemed to me that he approached each new adventure with the same excitement and enthusiasm as he did the first one. So he certainly saw opportunities in all parts of life,” Batista said. “He’ll be missed, but I think that he’s ingrained a lot of his positive characteristics in so many of us, so he will still be there.”
Waldron said that among Frank Ferguson’s greatest accomplishments was the work he did on the company’s BRIGANCE product, a comprehensive inventory of basic skills that helped schools measure the learning progress of special education students. “I’m at peace knowing he had an incredible life and he gave great gifts, but we will desperately miss him,” Waldron said. “His history is a part of our souls. The great importance of Frank Ferguson is that the values he embodied — service, ethics, passion for schools — will live beyond him.”
Before co-founding Curriculum Associates, Ferguson was serving as president of Bose Corp. while it was still a small start-up based out of MIT.