COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

P.O. BOX 2120

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 23218-2120

SUPTS. MEMO NO. 64

March 25, 2005

INFORMATIONAL

TO:	Division Superintendents
FROM:	Jo Lynne DeMary Superintendent of Public Instruction
SUBJECT:	Web-Based NCS Mentor for Virginia

The Virginia Department of Education is pleased to announce the statewide availability of the Web-based version of NCS Mentor for Virginia, a training tool designed to help Virginias teachers prepare students for the English Standards of Learning Direct Writing Assessment. Developed by the Virginia Department of Education and Pearson Educational Measurement, this program provides practice-scoring opportunities with sets of papers written by Virginia students. Participants will be able to score papers in verification sets and view scoring based on Virginias three-domain scoring model. Teachers will gain better understanding of the Virginia Standards of Learning Direct Writing Assessments for grade 5, grade 8, and end-

of-course, understand the use of rubrics in scoring student writing, and develop consistency in scoring actual student work. Teachers may also use this program with students to facilitate their understanding of the expectations in each of the domains.

This program will provide an opportunity to study anchor papers that illustrate each score point of each domain and promote understanding of the differences between score points.

To access NCS Mentor for Virginia, go to www.ncsmentor.com.

• On the Pearson Mentor welcome page, click on the word customer in the top black bar.
• On the Pearson Mentor Customer page, click on Virginia.
• From the Welcome to NCS Mentor for Virginia, under new User, use the key word Virginia which will take you to the NCS Mentor Create Profile page.
• From here, you will create your own user name and password to be used each subsequent time you log in.

For further information, please contact Tracy Fair Robertson Tracy.Robertson@doe.virginia.gov high school English specialist, Office of Middle and High School Instruction, at 804-371-7585.

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