Harcourt Assessment Partners With Chicago Public Schools To Help Children Succed

District Will Administer Illinois Version of Stanford Learning First ClassViews™ Assessments on Paper and Will Pilot Online Assessment System in January

22 August 2005

SAN ANTONIO – Leading test developer and publisher Harcourt Assessment, Inc. will provide the Chicago Public Schools the Illinois version of Stanford Learning First ClassViews™ assessments for reading in grades three through eight.

The ClassViews assessments for Chicago Public Schools are custom-built to the Illinois Learning Standards and are designed to take a snapshot of student achievement at different times during the year to help teachers keep students on track for academic success.

At each grade level there will be three different test forms -- each with different questions -- and plans call for teachers to administer the assessments in October, January and May.

The ClassViews assessments, which are one part of Harcourt's innovative Stanford Learning First assessment system, will be administered on paper and scanned into Harcourt's system for fast scoring and reporting. The rapid turnaround will provide teachers the information they need to develop instructional strategies to improve student achievement before year-end testing.

In January, the district will pilot the online version of the ClassViews assessments in select schools.

“We are delighted that Chicago Public Schools has selected Harcourt Assessment as its testing partner,"

said Jeff Galt, the company's president and chief executive officer.

"We look forward to helping Chicago teachers use Stanford Learning First to guide their students to academic success, and we also look forward to working with Chicago Public Schools as it makes a gradual transition to online testing."

About Stanford Learning First and Harcourt Assessment

Stanford Learning First is being custom-built one state at a time to help states and school districts improve student achievement. The assessments can be administered in one class period for maximum instructional efficiency.

The ClassViews assessments are guided by the blueprints of statewide tests. They provide a snapshot that identifies a student’s level of proficiency on a state’s standards.

The other component of the Stanford Learning First assessment system is ClassLinks™, which consists of formative (periodic) assessments that are guided by each state’s content standards. The ClassLinks component includes a unique and powerful answer analysis feature that gives teachers immediate, standards-based feedback about student performance to help focus instruction on those content areas where students are struggling.

Based in San Antonio, Harcourt Assessment is a leading provider of high-quality assessment instruments and testing programs used by educators, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, human resource professionals, admissions and credentialing professionals, and businesses. Through the development of custom statewide educational testing programs, Harcourt is helping more than 20 states meet the accountability requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The company is a unit of Harcourt Education, which is the global education brand of Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: RUK and ENL). Reed Elsevier is a world-leading publisher and information provider operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business industry sectors.