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Pearson Educational Measurement Adds K-A-T's Automated Essay Scoring to Electronic Testing Services

Electronic scoring of extended-response test items supports growing use of testing services in K-12 education

Iowa City, Iowa - February 24, 2003 - Pearson Educational Measurement, a leading provider of K-12 testing services, today announced it is offering automated essay scoring as an integrated component of its eMeasurement™ suite of electronic testing services. Through an agreement with Knowledge Analysis Technologies, Boulder, Colo., Pearson Educational Measurement will offer the Intelligent Essay Assessor™ scoring product for essay and short answer test questions.

Pearson Educational Measurement scores more than 40 million student tests annually, including more than 84 million constructed-response test items.

"With the growing use of performance test items as a part of standardized testing, we are pleased to add the Knowledge Analysis Technologies product to our suite of scoring solutions," said Steve Kromer, General Manager of Pearson Educational Measurement. "Electronic scoring of constructed-response test items complements our professional scoring capabilities and allows us to offer our customers a quick, reliable, and cost-effective scoring solution to meet their needs."

Knowledge Analysis Technologies' automated scoring capabilities use Latent Semantic Analysis, a machine-learning algorithm that mimics human understanding of language. Knowledge Analysis Technologies developed the Intelligent Essay Assessor to automatically assess electronically submitted text essays and supply instantaneous feedback on the content and the quality of the student's writing.

"The Intelligent Essay Assessor gives instantaneous evaluation and advice on the conceptual content of written essays," said Tom Landauer, President of Knowledge Analysis Technologies. "We are happy to be working with Pearson Educational Measurement to bring this technology to the scoring of performance test items for testing programs across the country."

About Pearson Educational Measurement

Pearson Educational Measurement is the nation's largest commercial processor of K-12 student assessment tests. The company operates as a business of Pearson Education, the world's largest integrated education company, which in turn is a part of Pearson (NYSE: PSO; LSE: PSON), the international media company. Pearson's other primary operations include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group.

About Knowledge Analysis Technologies

Knowledge Analysis Technologies' (K-A-T) products and services are based on proprietary and patented machine-learning technology for text understanding. The company's focus is educational technology; applications cover an enormous range: from teaching reading and writing skills, developing leadership skills, to selecting high performance teams, to matching people to jobs. Clients include publishers, large testing and test preparation organizations, and the military. For more information on K-A-T, visit www.k-a-t.com.