NWEA to Purchase Learning and Assessment Programs from ETS

Contact:

• Tom Ewing
  (609) 683-2803
  mediacontacts@ets.org

Princeton, N.J. (July 6, 2011) —

The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) has reached agreement with the Princeton, New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), to purchase four learning, assessment and professional development programs. The agreement was signed
June 17.

Subject to customary closing conditions, effective July 1, NWEA will assume operation and ownership of the following ETS programs and products:

• Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT™) — a sustained, interactive professional development program that helps teachers adopt minute-to-minute and day-by-day assessment-for-learning strategies that have been shown by research to powerfully increase student learning.
• Focus on Standards® Instructional Improvement Model — a school improvement solution that combines successful, standards-based instructional practices with customizable, technology-based assessment tools to help school districts engage in continuous improvement.
• Formative Assessment Item Bank — an item bank that contains more than 64,000 high-quality items that measure mathematics, reading and writing for kindergarten through grade 12 and science for grade 3 through high school. The majority of items are multiple choice, but the bank also contains some short and extended constructed-response items.
• Learner Snapshot^SM — a program of games, surveys, and other activities that allows users to identify their life skills, personal skills and interests and how that influences their work and success in school.

"We are extremely excited to bring these well known and well respected assets into the NWEA family," said Matt Chapman, President and CEO of NWEA. “They help us expand the reach of our mission — partnering to help all kids learn — by allowing us to more directly impact day-in, day-out teaching and learning, particularly when complimented with our own MAP® assessments."

"NWEA is an organization with a strong reputation for research-based assessments and professional development,” says George Powell, Vice President and COO of K-12 Assessments at ETS. “We believe our Keeping Learning on Track and other products and services will contribute greatly to helping NWEA accomplish their mission."

About NWEA

NWEA is a global not-for-profit educational services organization with home offices in Portland, Oregon. NWEA partners with educational organizations worldwide to provide computer-based assessment suites, professional development and research services. NWEA's Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) adaptive assessments leverage more than 30 years of research into student growth that informs decision-making at every level, from classrooms to boardrooms. NWEA's research center, The Kingsbury Center at NWEA, uses a Growth Research DatabaseTM to drive original research with universities, foundations and policymakers. Learn more at nwea.org.

About ETS

At nonprofit ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series™ assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org.