West Virginia Selects CTB/McGraw-Hill for State's First Online Classroom Assessment System

CTB/McGraw-Hill, the nation's leading provider of assessment solutions, today announced that it has been awarded a four-year contract by the West Virginia Department of Education to deliver a customized version of CTB's i-know™ family of online assessments designed for classroom use. The i-know West Virginia system will serve approximately 200,000 students in Grades 3-12.

The partnership between the West Virginia Department of Education and CTB/McGraw-Hill is a direct result of the department's commitment to integrate technology in the classroom and meet annual progress goals throughout the state's 55 school districts. "The portfolio of products offered by the i-know system seamlessly merges technology into the student curriculum and provides West Virginia teachers with the data required to continually monitor individual and classroom progress toward meeting mastery levels," said Dr. Jan Barth, executive director of the West Virginia Department of Education's Office of Student Assessment Services. "Through this alliance, teachers will have access to a formative testing tool to analyze student data and develop targeted instruction for each student in every classroom."

The customized i-know system offers West Virginia teachers options for designing, administering and automatically scoring instructionally-based classroom assessments that indicate how students are progressing toward the mastery of West Virginia's Content Standards and Objectives. Individual student and classroom reports, collected throughout the school year, enable teachers to use test data to target and individualize instruction in Mathematics, Reading/Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. The system offers teachers access to time-saving ready-made tests, and test banks of items aligned to state standards for creating their own tests. The items, written by CTB content specialists and carefully aligned to meet the state's Content Standards and Objectives, were also reviewed by West Virginia educators.

"We are pleased to partner with West Virginia to provide educators with assessment expertise that will help them improve student achievement," said David Taggart, president of CTB/McGraw-Hill. "Our online i-know system will provide West Virginia educators quick and easy access to information on the performance of their students and strengthen the quality of data that is critical in making instructional decisions."

CTB/McGraw-Hill, the only American-owned, full-service educational test publisher, has been a trusted name in assessment for more than 75 years. The company publishes nationally standardized tests, provides comprehensive scoring and reporting services, and creates software for managing and tracking annual student progress toward state and national goals. CTB currently provides test results for more than 11 million students a year and serves more than 6,500 school districts in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the worldwide U.S. Department of Defense system.

About CTB/McGraw-Hill

As the nation's leading publisher of standardized achievement tests for pre-school, elementary, middle, and high schools, CTB/McGraw-Hill LLC offers a broad range of assessments, software and services. CTB/McGraw-Hill LLC is part of McGraw-Hill Education and is owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), a global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in the financial services, education and business information markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's and Business Week. Founded in 1888, the Corporation has more than 322 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2003 were $4.8 billion. Additional information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com and www.ctb.com.

Cheryl Marty
CTB
+1-831-393-7363
cheryl_marty@ctb.com

SOURCE: CTB/McGraw-Hill

CONTACT: Michael H. Kean
McGraw-Hill
+1-831-393-7816
michael_kean@mcgraw-hill.com, or
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Web site: http://www.ctb.com/
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