Press Release - June 12, 2006

Vantage Learning Enhances Award-Winning MY Access!® Writing Program With 45 New Writing Prompts Aligned to Scholastic Read 180® Enterprise Edition

Highly popular and intensive reading intervention program adds to the growing bank of thematic and leveled writing assignments available in MY Access!

Newtown, Pa., June 12, 2006 - Vantage Learning, www.VantageLearning.com, the world's leading provider of online essay scoring technologies and instructional writing tools, today announced they have released 45 writing prompts aligned to Scholastic Read 180® Enterprise Edition Stage B in its latest version of the MY Access!® online instructional writing program. These new prompts-aligned by level, thematic unit, and the scope and sequence of Scholastic's proven intervention program-are available for immediate use.

MY Access! is based on Vantage Learning's IntelliMetric® engine, which uses a rich blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and the digitization of human expertise to accurately assess a student's competency and progress in writing. The program is recognized as the gold standard for quality and reliability in essay scoring.

Administrators can now select and assign writing prompts aligned to Scholastic's comprehensive reading solution, designed for students whose reading achievement is below the proficient level. This provides a valuable opportunity for students to further integrate reading and writing, and to write more frequently. Teachers can drill down on specific weak and strong skills by domain. Such highly prescriptive feedback and support develops student writing skills, and is critical for achieving adequate yearly progress (AYP) in writing.

"Vantage Learning listens to educators to help them meet the growing needs of their schools and districts," says Harry Barfoot, Vice President of Vantage Learning. "They suggested that providing specific writing prompts aligned with adopted reading programs would help students integrate reading and writing more effectively. For example, if a middle school student is using Scholastic Read 180, and is working in a topic CD on extreme sports, an appropriate sports writing prompt can be assigned."

This provides students with the tools to enhance their vocabulary, spelling, and other skills taught by Scholastic Read 180. MY Access! contains multilingual dictionaries, a thesaurus, word banks, spelling and grammar checkers, writing editors, multilevel tutoring, and other powerful tools to help students develop their writing skills. Students can write and revise their writing, and reinforce new skills through practice, while their interest in the subject is high. ELL Spanish-speaking students can select Spanish as their feedback language, and receive additional tips on how to improve their English writing skills.

With the MY Access! program, students maintain their work in an online portfolio that contains their initial draft, evaluation scores, and subsequent revisions.

Similarly, teachers can review any individual student's portfolio, provide comments, and track the overall class portfolio to manage writing instruction.

"Writing fluency is critical in enhancing our students' academic achievement," says Kenny McCay, Language Arts Coordinator of Santa Rosa County School District in Florida. "Scholastic Read 180 and Vantage Learning's MY Access! are perfect examples of how we are using technology to engage students in learning and make the reading and writing connection. We are excited that MY Access! has added Read 180 Enterprise Edition writing prompts, and strengthened an already impressive program."

For more information regarding MY Access!, please contact Harry Barfoot at 267-756-1125, or HBarfoot@Vantage.com.

About Vantage Learning

With over 146 million online test transactions last year, Vantage Learning is the world's leading provider of online assessment and automated essay scoring. Recognized as the gold standard for scoring quality, consistency, reliability, and scalability, Vantage Learning's award-winning education tools meet the needs of educators and school administrators, businesses and government agencies that need a comprehensive Internet-based test authoring, delivery, scoring, and reporting platform. Vantage developed IntelliMetric®, which administers and scores responses to open-ended questions over the Internet using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Vantage Learning's MY Access!® instructional writing program won a Codie Award in 2006 for Best Instructional Program: English/Language Arts - Secondary, was a Codie Awards dual winner in 2005, is a 2004 Award of Excellence winner from Technology and Learning Magazine, and Eduventures selected Vantage Learning as one of the eight most innovative educational technology companies.

Vantage Learning provides services across a broad spectrum of clients. The College Board, ACT, and the Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®), all utilize Vantage technologies for college readiness and admissions. Oregon, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia leverage the Vantage Learning Platform™, the Student Progress Monitoring System™, and the Uniform Online Testing System™ for formative, summative, and computer adaptive assessments that drive instructional programs. Respected publishers like Hampton-Brown offer customized versions to support assessment linked to their proprietary content. School districts such as Los Angeles Unified School District, Red Clay DE, Milwaukee Public Schools, Newark Public Schools, and many other respected districts integrate MY Access! into their core language arts curriculum. Learn more at www.VantageLearning.com.

Scholastic and Read 180 are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic, Inc. This announcement is neither an endorsement nor a sponsorship of the MY Access! program by Scholastic, Inc.