Press Release - February 28, 2005

Graduate Management Admission Council Approves ACT Recommendation of Vantage Learning to Provide Essay Scoring Services Beginning 2006

Vantage Learning's IntelliMetric® Automated Essay-Scoring Program to Score Analytical Writing Assessment Portion of the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®)

Scottsdale, AZ, February 28, 2005 - Vantage Learning (www.vantagelearning.com), the world's leading provider of online assessment tools, has entered into an agreement with ACT Inc. to provide computer-based essay scoring for the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) portion of the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®) beginning in 2006. Under a separate agreement among ACT and Pearson VUE with the Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®), ACT is responsible for GMAT® AWA prompt development and scoring. ACT will provide essay scoring by human raters that will be combined with automated essay scoring provided by Vantage Learning. The announcement was made from the floor at the Association of Test Publishers' Innovations In Testing 2005 Conference. GMAC is a nonprofit education association of leading business schools worldwide and is dedicated to creating access to and disseminating information about graduate business and management education. The organization administers the GMAT®-the only test designed specifically for business schools-more than 200,000 times annually. More than 1,500 schools and 1,800 programs around the world use the assessment exam.

As part of the new contract, IntelliMetric®, Vantage Learning's automated essay scoring engine, will score applicants' responses to two types of prompts within each GMAT® AWA assessment. IntelliMetric is an artificial intelligence program capable of scoring open-ended and constructed-response questions with documented levels of accuracy and reliability exceeding that of human expert scorers. Vantage Learning's IntelliMetric consistently applies the pooled knowledge (scoring rubric) of expert scorers to the essays it receives.

"We're proud that ACT and the GMAC have chosen to use IntelliMetric in scoring the essay portion of the GMAT®," said Harry Barfoot, VP of Sales of Marketing for Vantage Learning. "In the past three years, we've seen an increased focus on writing at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. This, in turn, has intensified the need for top-rate essay-scoring methods that can assess writing skills. Vantage is providing automated essay scoring for several ACT programs. We've found the ACT human essay scoring to be outstanding and combining this with IntelliMetric is the right choice for computer-based essay scoring."

After a thorough evaluation of Vantage Learning's IntelliMetric automated essay scoring program, ACT determined the program was able to accurately and reliably score the GMAT® essays. During the evaluation, IntelliMetric was used to score 500 responses to six GMAT test prompts. IntelliMetric showed very similar results to human raters, with a perfect and/or adjacent agreement 96-98% of the time. This agreement level was also significantly higher than the former method. Delivery of the ACT human and Vantage automated scoring of the GMAT® AWA will begin in early 2006.

About Vantage Learning

Vantage Learning (www.vantagelearning.com), an affiliate of Vantage Laboratories and the leading provider of online assessment and automated essay scoring, developed IntelliMetric® to meet the needs of business, education, and government agencies needing a comprehensive Internet-based test authoring, delivery, scoring and reporting platform. IntelliMetric administers and scores responses to open-ended questions over the Internet using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology. An individual can enter a response to a question posed, submit the response, and receive an immediate score with feedback within seconds.

Most recently, Vantage Learning's MY Access! won the 2004 Award of Excellence from Technology and Learning Magazine, and Eduventures selected Vantage Learning as one of the eight most innovative educational technology companies. In addition, MY Access! was included in Technology and Learning Magazine's Top 10 Smart Technologies for Schools in 2002, and is a Codie Awards finalist three years in a row. Vantage Learning provides services in all 50 states including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Oregon, and Texas and provides services to educational leaders such as The College Board, ACT, Harcourt Assessment, Inc., CTB/McGraw Hill and Thomson Learning, and industry giants such as Microsoft, Apple Computer, AOL, and Sun Microsystems.

About ACT

ACT has a well-established reputation for excellence and integrity in test development. ACT has nearly two decades of experience in computer-based testing and has delivered 4.2 million computer-adaptive tests to 1.2 million students. Currently, 4,500 colleges and universities use the company's admission services.

About the Graduate Management Admission Council

Founded in 1953, the Graduate Management Admission Council began as an association of nine business schools whose goal was to develop a standardized test to help business schools select qualified applicants. In the first year it was offered, the assessment GMAC sponsored, now known as the Graduate Management Admission Test®, or GMAT®, was taken just over 2,000 times; in recent years, it has been taken more than 200,000 times annually. Initially used in admissions by 54 schools, the GMAT® is now used by more than 1,500 schools and 1,800 programs.