Edusoft

Region IV ESC and Edusoft Offer Texas Educators Resources to Improve Student Performance

Houston, TX - June 8, 2004 - Region IV Educational Service Center (ESC), a provider of professional development training and educational materials, and Edusoft®, the leading provider of assessment solutions, today announced a partnership to provide comprehensive assessment solutions to Texas school districts and campuses for improving student performance.

Region IV ESC provides high-quality assessments for Texas districts, including periodic assessments based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and yearly simulation assessments for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). Edusoft provides scanning and scoring solutions for all of Region IV ESC's assessments and a broad range of analysis and reporting tools.

The partnership, the first of its kind for Region IV ESC, offers educators the ability to test with answer keys aligned to TEKS and TAKS; view TEKS and TAKS student performance on one report; and use data to make instructional decisions for students. Edusoft provides immediate access to online student performance results and customized instructional tools based on the automatic scoring of plain paper answer sheets.

:"We want all school districts to have the best resources available which improve the academic performance of each and every student in the state," said Dr. Bill McKinney, Region IV ESC's executive director.

"Our partnership with Edusoft enables us to provide educators with superior content, quality assessments, quick and cost-effective scoring, accurate data analysis, and complete instructional planning, all directed to connecting assessment back to instruction."

"Our association with Region IV ESC reinforces our position of closing the achievement gap between assessment and instruction," said Jay Kimmelman, Edusoft's president and co-founder. "Together, we offer a combined solution of comprehensive assessments with easy-to-use scoring and scanning tools that ultimately help educators raise the achievement levels of their students."

Additional information on the Region IV ESC and Edusoft partnership can be obtained from Region IV ESC (www.esc4.net or 713-462-7708) and Edusoft (www.edusoft.com or 866-4-Edusoft).

About Region IV Education Service Center
Region IV ESC is one of 20 Texas regional education service centers, serving 54 school districts, more than 954,000 students and 73,000 staff on 1,232 campuses in the seven-county Houston area. Region IV ESC provides quality products and services to school districts, supporting improvement in education.

About Edusoft
Edusoft offers the only proven standards-based assessment platform to enable public schools immediate access to online student performance results and customized instructional tools based on the automatic scoring of plain paper answer sheets. Edusoft serves over 250 school districts, 2,100 schools and 1.8 million students. Edusoft is a division of the Houghton Mifflin Company®, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Additional information on Edusoft and its products can be obtained at www.edusoft.com.

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