Company Profile: Touchstone Applied Science Associates, Inc.  TASA

For over twenty years, TASA has served the rapidly expanding education market, primarily through the publishing and sale of its highly regarded proprietary reading tests. Since 1994, the Company has completed four acquisitions and now serves three educational markets: (1) educational assessment and evaluation, (2) educational instruction, and (3) educational delivery. TASA revenues in Fiscal 1996 were $2.5 million and $14.4 million in Fiscal 2001.

Prior to 1997, the Company's revenues derived from the publishing and distribution of its proprietary line of reading tests known as the Degrees of Reading Power(R) ("DRP"). The Company's highly regarded DRP tests enable a school, district, or other entity to assess an individual's reading comprehension ability. These tests allow an individual's reading development to be tracked over time and are often used in the US to audit a school's success in the teaching of reading. In 1997, the Company acquired BETA, which operates as the Company's custom test design division. BETA provides its test design and psychometric services to publishers, and to state customers in Delaware, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia. BETA was contracted by the State of Michigan to help develop an alternative assessment test for special education students, and is its second major state alternative assessment contract (Texas). These two divisions address the need to develop fundamental literacy skills that has long been recognized as essential to a student's progress and success throughout school and life.

Modern Learning Press, Inc. ("MLP"), which purchased substantially all of the assets of Programs for Education, Inc., is the Company's presence in the instructional marketplace. MLP designs, publishes and distributes affordable "consumable" student workbooks that target grades K-6, and creates and publishes books and pamphlets for elementary school teachers and parents. In Fiscal 1997, the Company purchased the Maculaitis Assessment of Competencies test, which is a comprehensive language assessment and evaluation program for English as a second language.

In 1998, the Company organized TASA Educational Services Corp. ("TESC"), to operate and acquire post-secondary proprietary schools. TESC completed its first acquisition in November 1998 of the 750-student Mildred Elley Schools ("Elley").