Standards-Based Grade Books

Over the last 72 hours I’ve reviewed three grade books that do a pretty good job of tracking competency at the subskill level–that is if you load your standards, have a curriculum that addresses those standards, and thoroughly assess knowledge and skills against those standards.
PowerTeacher, by Pearson, comes with PowerSchools, the sector leader with more than 30% share.  The standards-based reporting features are a decent product  upgrades that makes it pretty easy to grade in a traditional and/or standards-based method.
Pinnacle, by Global Scholar (recently acquired by Scantron) is a pretty cool instruction suite with a standards-based gradebook and pretty good analytics.
Educate, by Three Shapes, used across the Reinventing Schools Coalition.  This platform was built to support the RISC competency-based school model.
Last month, I reviewed LookRed which has the best data visualization tools I’ve seen and a profile that communicate student progress in
I heard good things about Desire2Learn today and suspect they have an adequate gradebook.  BrainHoney, from Agilix, gets high marks from users.

Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark is the CEO of Getting Smart. He has written or co-authored more than 50 books and papers including Getting Smart, Smart Cities, Smart Parents, Better Together, The Power of Place and Difference Making. He served as a public school superintendent and the first Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Discover the latest in learning innovations

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

0 Comments

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.