Take it from an educator.

As director of educational technology for the Capistrano Unified School District in southern California, it was my department’s responsibility to find a program to replace [our current system]. We had been with [our current system] for over ten years, however, we noticed teachers were not using the Item Bank, therefore we needed to switch to a program that provided similar tools as [our current system] without the Item Bank and the high price tag as well.

When I first contacted GradeCam, they immediately got on a Zoom call with me to discuss my district’s needs. Gradient, which is a product of GradeCam, had everything we needed in a program to replace [our current system] except the Item Bank, which our teachers were not using, so it was an easy decision to move forward with Gradient.

Within a week, GradeCam had all of our secondary teachers and students rostered in Gradient. This was an especially smooth process because they work with Clever for SSO. We then quickly set up trainings for our secondary teachers. Over the next two weeks, Katie Sellstrom conducted four in-person trainings at our district office. To say I was nervous about this transition is an understatement. For the most part, our teachers were not particularly happy about having to learn a new tool after so many changes during the Pandemic. However, Katie was so confident and knowledgeable about the product that I was able to relax after about 15 minutes into the first training. Katie’s attention to detail and her knowledge of the product helped the teachers realize this transition would actually benefit them in the long run. After every training, teachers left thanking me for the training as well as finding such a great product to replace [our current system].

I am extremely satisfied with how this transition is being accepted by our teachers, and I have no doubt it is because of the professionalism, knowledge, and attention of the staff at GradeCam.”

We found [Gradient] very useful because that is how we conduct our mock Regents. We are able to analyze different grade levels, different subject areas. We can look at ISS and ENL data.

In regards to Regents Prep, the APs are championed with taking ownership of their own department and providing the mock Regents. Once they do that, they have departmental meetings every Monday to look at the data, look at the mock Regents that were created, and look at what skill and content gaps that exist.

I am also in charge of guidance, and I work with the small learning communities. We have eight different small learning communities and we monitor student progress and student attendance. We are not able to know what is driving student scholarship and student achievement without knowing the data behind it and where their content and skill gaps are.

We are also looking at literacy supports for the literacy initiative and we want to look at how the students are scoring on the mock Regents. If a student is not scoring on mock Regents, what area in that mock Regents is a student struggling in? Is it a content gap? Is it a skill gap? Gradient allows us to look into [those areas] and we share it with the small learning community teachers, as well as the department APs, who share it then with their teachers.

Data is being generated from [Gradient] and it’s helping our students a lot, especially as our post-COVID students coming back into the building, attendance rates increasing day by day. We also want to make sure that we are getting them up to speed with their literacy supports as well as their content subject area supports.