Academic Therapy Publications (ATP) was founded in 1965 by John I. Arena, an educator and therapist who started as regular classroom teacher before working with the physically handicapped. At age 30 he became Principal of Marindale School in San Rafael, CA. After that he was an instructor at the innovative Dewitt Reading Clinic. The foundations of ATP began with the journal Academic Therapy Quarterly, the first periodical devoted to disseminating information on learning differences to parents and teachers as well as professionals. During the 1970s John Arena also started the Arena School and Learning Center, which at that time was the largest private nonprofit school in the Northern San Francisco Bay Area. He was also heavily involved through the 1980s with various organizations such as the Learning Disabilities Association (LDA). Over 50 years later, ATP remains a family-owned business that has a great team of people who continue in the company’s tradition of providing relevant tests and reading materials to special education professionals, remedial reading teachers, speech-pathologists, school psychologists, occupational therapists, and others working in the K-12 school system. ATP's test division, ATP Assessments, publishes nationally standardized, criterion and norm-referenced tests. ATP's remedial reading division, High Noon Books, publishes phonics-based and high interest - low reading level (hi-lo) books for struggling readers.
