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California Approves Pearson Professional Development (PPD) For Training State's Teachers

Comprehensive Teacher Training Tied to California State Standards

Upper Saddle River, NJ - October 31, 2002 - Pearson Professional Development (PPD), part of Pearson Education, the world's leading educational publisher, recently received approval from the California Department of Education to offer its comprehensive, research-based professional development program for literature and language arts. For the first time, professional development is directly tied to curriculum, which in turn is directly tied to state standards in an effort to ultimately increase student performance.

Through the AB466 legislation passed last year, the state has made available $31 million in reimbursement to local educational agencies (LEAs) for professional development in reading/language arts and mathematics for 2002-03. The funding provides for 120 hours of professional development that is closely tied to adopted student materials. Additional funding is expected in 2003-04 and 2004-05.

PPD's professional development solutions are tied to Pearson Prentice Hall's Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes literature and language arts program, which has been adopted by nearly half of all adopting middle schools in California. The corollary professional development program, funded by AB466 and submitted jointly with the Sacramento Department of Education, provides coaching, instruction, and evaluation strategies specific to the Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes program.

"In the Los Angeles Unified School District it has proven effective to implement a professional development curriculum that is aligned to state standards," said Ronni Ephraim, LAUSD Assistant Superintendent of Instruction. "We worked closely and collaboratively with Prentice Hall to ensure that the professional development curriculum met the goals of AB466. Our PPD trainers understand the importance of providing teachers with a deeper understanding of the current reading research and the California Content Standards tied directly to the instructional program that the teachers use in their classrooms."

The integrated, on-site, and on-line program consists of forty hours of on-site training and eighty hours of on-line follow-up in specially-designed courses like "The Foundations of Coaching and Mentoring," "Active Learning: Structures to Engage All Students," "Vocabulary Development," "Comprehension of Literary and Informational," and "Literary Response and Analysis."

On-line training is available via LessonLab, PPD's strategic partner, which connects theory and research with real-life classroom application, and unites internationally recognized research on teaching and teacher learning with software and program development to improve teaching. The program also includes built-in teacher training teams consisting of California teachers and language arts curriculum supervisors who have received extensive training on the standards, reading research and the overall program. To date, hundreds of Los Angeles teacher have been trained through the program.

"Thanks to this new funding, the most widely-used middle school literature and language arts program can now be directly supported by the California standards aligned professional development resources of PPD," said Marty Smith, President, Pearson School Group. "We're pleased to offer the program to districts, schools, and teachers' via on-site and online LessonLab delivery system, providing them with the most accessible, flexible, and comprehensive professional development resources."

For more information, contact Shawn Brown Brumfield, Pearson Professional Development Coordinator, at 626-345-1612.

About Pearson Education

Educating 100 million people worldwide, Pearson Education is the global leader in integrated education publishing. With such renowned brands as Prentice Hall, Longman, Scott Foresman, Addison Wesley, NCS Pearson, Skylight Professional Development, and many others, Pearson Education provides quality professional development, content, assessment tools and educational services in all available media to a worldwide marketplace, spanning the learning continuum from birth through college and beyond.

Pearson Education is the global leader in online learning with nearly 2,000 textbook companion Web sites, the InformIT website for technology professionals, and the Family Education Network, the award winning online resource for parents, teachers, and children.

Pearson Education is part of Pearson (NYSE: PSO), the international media company. In addition to Pearson Education, Pearson's primary operations include Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group.