What Educational Consulting Services does

Educational Consulting Services, Inc. (ECS) is a privately held California consulting firm founded in 1989 and headquartered in Huntington Beach that operates the AARC (Academic Attendance Recovery Coordinated) Program on behalf of California K-12 public school districts. The company's core service is the operational management of structured four-hour weekend instructional sessions (and, under the 2025 SB 153/SB 176 framework, before/after-school and intersession sessions) that allow districts to recapture Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding lost to student absences, with districts losing roughly $50 per absence per day absent such recovery. ECS handles end-to-end program delivery: identifying eligible students via SIS-based filtering, coordinating credentialed district teachers and classified staff, managing compliance documentation under California Education Code Section 37223 (and SB 153/SB 176), and running the logistics of each session.

The technology layer consists of two private web dashboards, the District Zone dashboard for district administrators and the School Zone dashboard for site leadership, which deliver weekly attendance and recovery metrics, staffing ratios, calendars, lunch count submissions, and revenue/expense reports on a 24/7 basis. Adjacent offerings include the Truancy Notification Program (TNP) for chronic absenteeism, consulting and mandate reimbursement support, professional development, and lesson plan resources. The product surface is centered on compliance, reporting, and operational management rather than student-facing software.

ECS sells to California K-12 districts through direct field sales targeting Assistant Superintendents and Board of Education members, supplemented by industry conferences, content marketing, and an active social presence. Pricing is custom-negotiated per district under multi-year contracts on a managed-services basis. During the 2015-2016 school year, the company reported 21 partner districts, 290,000 students served, 50 million instructional minutes delivered, and over $12 million in client-recovered ADA revenue. The firm employs 11-50 people and is led by Program Directors Chris Gocke and Robert Lopez, with no disclosed external investors or parent company.

Name

Educational Consulting Services

Legal name

Educational Consulting Services, Inc.

Website

https://aarcprogram.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1989

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Educational Consulting Services operates the AARC Program, a managed attendance-recovery service that helps California K-12 public school districts recapture lost ADA funding through compliant weekend and intersession instructional sessions supported by District Zone and School Zone dashboards.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Educational Consulting Services

NAICS

Educational Support Services (611710), Educational Services (611)

SIC

Services-Educational Services (8200), Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Tuition Assistance & Voucher/ESA Program Administration (EDADAHAF)

akta.pro secondary industry

In-Service Professional Development (Workshops/Institutes/Short Courses) (EDACAIAB)

Keywords

• ADA revenue recovery
• Attendance recovery programs
• K-12 school consulting
• Truancy notification services
• Educational financial consulting

Headquarters

HQ city

Huntington Beach

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Others

Revenue model

1. ADA Recovery Program Services: ECS manages the operational aspects of attendance recovery programs for school districts, handling logistics, staffing coordination, and session management. Districts recover lost ADA funding through structured four-hour instructional sessions, generating additional revenue.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Educational Consulting Services (ECS) operates the AARC (Academic Attendance Recovery Coordinated) Program, a managed instructional service that helps California K-12 public school districts recover lost Average Daily Attendance (ADA) revenue by running four-hour instructional sessions on Saturdays, Sundays, and other non-school days. ECS handles all logistics, staffing coordination, compliance tracking, and financial reporting, while credentialed district teachers deliver the instruction. Complementary offerings include the Truancy Notification Program (TNP), District Zone and School Zone dashboards, consulting, and professional development.

Product overview

Educational Consulting Services (ECS) offers a unified educational services platform centered on the AARC (Academic Attendance Recovery Coordinated) Program, which helps California K-12 school districts recover lost ADA revenues and re-engage students with absences. The core AARC Program provides structured instructional sessions on weekends and non-school days, supported by complementary modules including the District Zone and School Zone Dashboards for administrative oversight, the Truancy Notification Program (TNP) for addressing chronic absenteeism, and supplementary services in consulting and professional development. The company has operated since 1989 and created the AARC Program in 2005.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• AARC Attendance Recovery Program: A program built to be turnkey, scalable, and fully compliant with California's new Education Code requirements for attendance recovery under SB 153/SB 176.
• Truancy Notification Program (TNP)

Products and services

• AARC Program Academic Attendance Recovery Coordinated Program that delivers broad-spectrum instructional programs (academic support, tutoring, enrichment, test prep, credit recovery, custom offerings) for students with excused and unexcused absences through structured sessions on non-school days, helping California K-12 districts recover lost ADA revenue.
• Attendance Recovery Program Newly launched turnkey program compliant with California SB 153 and SB 176, allowing districts to offer recovery sessions before/after school, on weekends, and during intersession breaks, with students able to recover up to 10 full-day absences per student.
• Truancy Notification Program (TNP) Program designed to address chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy through a structured series of letters and coordinated conferences notifying parents and guardians of student truancy.
• Consulting Services Financial consulting services for California K-12 school districts, including mandate reimbursement support.
• Professional Development Training and development services for district staff implementing attendance recovery programs.

Quantifiable outcome

• Districts can recover up to $50 per day per absence through four-hour instructional sessions
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Santa Ana USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership for AARC Program providing student engagement and ADA recovery services. District participates in Saturday instructional sessions to recover lost attendance revenue and provide extended learning opportunities for students.
• Compton USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015Long-standing district partnership with TNP Program integration. District utilizes both attendance recovery and truancy notification services to address chronic absenteeism.
• Colton USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership delivering significant ADA revenue recovery through Saturday school programs and attendance recovery services.
• Pomona USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership achieving nearly $1 million in ADA revenue recovery during first year of AARC program implementation.
• MUHSDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership providing student engagement programs through AARC weekend instructional sessions.
• Alisal Union School DistrictcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership focused on student engagement through extended weekend learning opportunities.
• LEUSDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership delivering student engagement and attendance improvement programs.
• Lynwood USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership providing recovered absences through Saturday attendance recovery programs.
• Monterey USDcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2015District partnership focused on ADA recovery and attendance metrics improvement.

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Frontline Education: A leading K-12 SaaS vendor for human capital, absence management, and student services workflows. Comparable because it serves the same district administrative buyers and overlaps in attendance and staff management, though as part of a much wider software portfolio.
• PowerSchool: The dominant K-12 student information system, sitting inside district attendance and enrollment workflows. Comparable as a broad incumbent whose data layer could power or absorb attendance-recovery services like ECS's.
• Imagine Learning: A larger, established K-12 education company offering supplemental instruction, intervention, and assessment tools. Comparable as a broad incumbent serving California districts with overlapping instructional and student-recovery offerings, though broader in portfolio.
• Edmentum: A large K-12 online learning provider offering credit recovery, intervention, and supplemental instruction. Comparable as a broad incumbent offering the type of supplemental instruction ECS delivers in AARC sessions, though as a software/SaaS platform.

Emerging players

• Apex Learning: Provider of online credit recovery and supplemental instruction for K-12. Comparable because it targets the same district buyer for instructional recovery offerings, though primarily digital rather than ECS's in-person weekend model.
• Istation: Provides adaptive reading and intervention assessments used in K-12 to identify at-risk students. Comparable as a niche/emerging player whose identification-and-recovery loop overlaps with ECS's SIS-integrated student filtering for ADA recovery eligibility.

Direct peers

• Public Consulting Group: Provides management consulting and managed services to K-12 districts, including attendance, special education, and Medicaid reimbursement programs. Comparable as a B2B consulting partner helping school districts maximize reimbursable revenues through operational support.
• School Innovations & Achievement: A California-focused consulting firm providing fiscal, attendance, and mandate reimbursement services to K-12 school districts. Directly comparable because it competes in the same niche of helping California districts recover attendance-related funding and navigate compliance.
• Catapult Learning: A provider of K-12 instructional and intervention services, including supplemental instruction, tutoring, and credit recovery delivered in schools. Comparable because it sells directly to school districts for instructional programs addressing attendance and academic gaps, similar to AARC's Saturday/Sunday session model.

Others

• Attendance Works: A national non-profit focused on reducing chronic absenteeism through research, policy advocacy, and tools for districts. Comparable as a thematically related organization addressing the same chronic absenteeism problem ECS's AARC/TNP programs aim to solve.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/aarcprogram
• Facebookfacebook.com/aarcprogram

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Educational Consulting Services