Testimonials

Since our founding in 1991, we've been pleased to have been able to serve the needs of many educators throughout the US and around the world. We want to share some of their thoughts with you.

John Long, Technology Coordinator
Roosevelt Elementary School
West Palm Beach, FL

Our students go home and write at night just so they can have their papers scanned into the Grady Profile.

Barbara New, Art Teacher & Tech Coordinator
Pioneer Education Center
Pittsburgh, PA

We're very pleased with Grady Profile. It's a very solid program, we don't often find people who back up their software like this.

Kim Salo, Instrumental Music Teacher
Eden Valley - Watkins Public Schools
Eden Valley, MN

I purchased your Grady Profile this summer and have been using it with my band students. In Minnesota, we have a Graduation Rule with a "Profile of Learning" in which students must complete Performance Packages with tasks and assessments to show what they have learned. I have been using Grady for my elementary students to complete their Electronic Portfolio in their Band Package. The Sound Exhibit feature has been great! The kids love hearing themselves immediately after they get done playing. I have like the checklist section, especially when the students compare their evaluation with mine. The kids keep asking, "Do we get to record on the computer today?" I used the computer for Parent/Teacher Conferences and I had parents line up at my door to "hear" how their kids have been doing in their band lessons.

Richard Hoover, Career Development Coordinator
Akron Public Schools
Akron, OH

Grady Profile has already had a significant impact on our 5 pilot school staffs and is starting to get the attention of some district leaders who have ignored the PEP to this point. In just the few months we have been using Grady, we have seen more interest in curriculum than anyone can remember. Some teachers are asking principals to hold staff meetings to improve the language in our curriculum so that it makes sense to everyone — including themselves. For some, it has been many years since they even looked at the curriculum let alone used it to design their instructional program. We even have a few teachers calling the Ohio Department of Education to complain about the curriculum. To the amazement of the pilot principals, some teachers are asking them to hold staff meetings to improve the language in our curriculum improvements.

Sound exhibits have dramatically increased teacher concerns about the numbers of students performing below grade level. Their frustration with this information has them asking Mary, Sally, principals and even me for solutions to this problem. The problem is not new, but seeking better solutions sure is. Sound exhibits have also had a dramatic impact on kids. With increased awareness of how they sound reading, they are trying harder than ever to improve.

Our Supplemental Education leaders are starting to discuss why our kids are performing so poorly even though we spend $10 million dollars a year on intervention programs. We hope that Let Me Learn® will help us identify what we need to spend this money on to get better results. Grady will provide us the ability to record learning profiles and track the impact of our intervention strategies for individual students.

These changes alone would make Grady the best investment our district has ever made, and we haven't even scratched the surface of what we have planned for it in our Personal Education Plan. I think the greatest thing that has happened is the renewed hope in our pilot schools that we can improve our impact on student learning. We have some very bright and talented teachers and principals working together to find solutions to very difficult problems. Every time we meet with the principals (weekly or biweekly) it is exciting to see them sharing what their staffs have come up with to address their major concerns.

John Williams, Teacher (Grade 3)
Horace May Elementary School
Bemidji, MN

I have developed a plan for using the Grady Profile to record student progress relative to the Minnesota Graduation Standards. It represents a starting point in the necessity of managing quite a large volume of information. Undoubtedly there is some room for improvement, yet, believe it to be better than anything I've heard of to date. The Grady has been most useful.

Pat Byers, Goals 2000 Project Coordinator
Sarasota County Schools
Sarasota, FL

I met you last year at FETC and was very interested in the new software as I teach a course for teachers in Sarasota County FL on "Designing Professional Portfolios." I now share with them the software as I do the course. Some of them are SO EXCITED, the ones who don't respond in that manner are not really with the age of technology yet. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the excitement that I feel about the software. I'm going to work on designing my own portfolio with the software.

Professor M.K. Gillis, Ed.D.
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, TX

I've "played" with the Teacher's Portfolio and am really impressed with it. I am recommending it the departmental Portfolio Committee on which I serve.

I am happy it includes the INTASC standards as we are discussing tying our program proficiencies, which are tied to the Texas "Proficiencies for Teachers in Learner-Centered Classrooms," to these national standards. I think that the Teacher's Portfolio might facilitate that. I also like the way the Teacher's Portfolio provides for easy entering and evaluating of portfolio contents because we need a working portfolio in which students can demonstrate their progress toward of mastery of the various proficiencies over two years, receive feedback from professors and clinical faculty, etc.

I especially like the idea of taking home zip disks and responding to/evaluating things right on them using the existing checklists or those we create instead of lugging around bulky notebooks, which get bulkier each semester. When you realize that we have 19 sections of undergraduate classes of 25-35 students working at field-based sites all over central Texas this semester and I don't know how many sections of student teachers, you get some idea of the size of our program and our task in developing a portfolio system. I am sure that the students too would love the convenience of a portfolio on a disk rather than in a bulky notebook which gets bulkier each semester.

Doug Graber, Superintendent
Morning Sun Community School
Morning Sun, IA

I feel particularly strongly that — even if you use the Grady Profile for nothing other than monitoring oral reading progress — that in itself is worth the cost of the program. I saw the most amazing progress and I'm totally convinced it was the result of the Grady Profile. When the students read, heard and evaluated their reading, they became much more tuned into thinking, "how can I get better?" And they did.

Gail Marshall, Ph.D.
Teacher, Writer, Trainer, Editor, Consultant, Researcher
St. Louis, MO

Parents will appreciate the ease with which Grady Profile captures all of their children's school experiences. Teachers will appreciate how quickly they can organize reports and administrators will appreciate how Grady Profile allows them to answer the question, "How is each student in the school performing on a wide variety of learning tasks?"

Sara L. Rodgers, 1st Grade Teacher
Jefferson Elementary School
Greeley, CO

Writing about Grady Profile and Grady Profile Companion, Sara says

I LOVE IT! My staff has been impressed so far. I wrote my first anecdotal comments yesterday. It was awesome! I can't wait to hear what my parents think! Thanks a bunch for a great product!

Joanne Iyo, Technology Coordinator
Hillside School
Closter, NJ

On Friday morning, one of our first grade classes invited all the parents to school so the children could share their work folders and their Grady files. We loaded the student folders onto the computers in our lab. It was amazing to see the children log onto Grady themselves and lead their parents through their sound exhibits. The parents were incredibly impressed. I overheard a lot of good "talk" as parents and children discussed the growth.

Norma Rice, Media Specialist / Network Administrator
Rosenwald Middle School
Panama City, FL

Grady Profile is a live and growing product. It's got everything — there's no comparison with other products.

Karen Minnis, 4th Grade Teacher
Morning Sun Elementary School
Morning Sun, IA

The title of our presentation [for the Midwest ASCD Conference] is "Authentic Assessment through the Use of the Grady Profile." I have some "powerful stuff" on my machine! One student was really a struggling reader in 2nd grade and he is now in 5th grade. When people hear his reading samples, they are amazed. I always tell them, "Assessment doesn't get any more authentic than this!"

Dr. Thomas A. Romberg, Director
School Mathematics and Science Achievement Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Madison, WI

Grady Profile is a good record keeping system for portfolios. It allows a teacher to collect, monitor and organize student work via audio, video and scanner. The quality of the stored work is very good and is readily accessible.

Susan Wilson, Kindergarten Teacher
Elm Road School
Mishawaka, IN

Once again let me say I love to use the Grady Profile and now with the Newton, it is fantastic to walk around and check my "K-kids" (kindergarten) as they are busy working. The most authentic assessment yet!

Mary Frese
New Hampton Elementary School
New Hampton, IA

The Grady Profile is one of our learning centers. My second graders are logging in and recording their own reading samples. When they listen to their first grade samples, their eyes get big as saucers at the difference. They're cognizant of their learning strategies. This is really higher order thinking.

Prof. Maria Serpa, Director
Special Needs Teacher Education Program
Lesley College
Cambridge, MA

We at Lesley College have found the Grady Profile to be a most usable and accessible assessment organization tool. In March of 1996, we offered training in the Grady Profile to faculty who teach assessment. The Grady Profile was met with overwhelming approval and has been incorporated into our current assessment courses in the Special Needs programs as a required component.

It is our opinion that the Grady Profile is the best tool linking best practice in assessment and technology. It gives teachers a much-needed framework for managing authentic assessment so that it is meaningful for both teacher and student. Within the organizational structure provided by the Grady Profile, assessment becomes a teaching/learning opportunity and does what good assessment should do — this is, inform instruction.

Larry Fenton
Steelton-Highspire School District
Harrisburg, PA

I have been working with the Grady Profile for about 1-1/2 years. ... I believe in its potential as a tool to give students ownership in their performance and learning.

I have seen the excitement teachers generate when introduced to electronic portfolios. They have found Grady Profile a useful and easy to use tool. Most of these teachers had not utilized nor knew how to utilize the power of the Macintosh computer. Most had worked only with text. In our training they learned to capture pictures, graphics, sound and video. These skills will be used by these teachers in many ways in their classroom projects and in the use of the Grady Profile.

I have not seen another product that not only involves the teacher and student, but also the parents. Most parents only get to see some work sent home. They really do not get a complete picture of what their children are doing in school. A report card does not give a good picture. The Grady Profile gives that complete picture to the parents and allows the parent to take part in the assessment process. This is much better than the parent signing a test acknowledging that they saw it. With this assessment tool, the parent can dial up the school server and look at their child's portfolio, take part in the assessment, and write reflection. Grady Profile generates reports that can be sent home and allow the parent to take part in the assessment.

Robert Edman-Wilson,
Title 1, ESL, Reading Recovery Coordinator
Tenaya Elementary School
Groveland, CA

I am a Title One Teacher/Coordinator at Tenaya Elementary School in Groveland, CA. In 1994, my program was designated the best elementary school language arts program in California by the California School Board Association. A lot of my program's success is centered in the area of technology. The most valuable tool I have is the Grady Profile. As an assessment tool it is tops. We use it daily to track student progress. We also use it to provide the classroom teachers with detailed information on their students. The program has also helped students to hear and see their progress. Having a federally funded program, assessment and tracking is essential and records must be stored for eight years. Using the Grady Profile saves our program valuable space and money. ... So many computer programs are frivolous and of limited value to the classroom teacher and the students they are charges to educate. The Grady Profile is the mother lode — an indispensable tool without equal — profile assessment is where most of the state is gearing towards as this is a more reliable gauge of student growth than standardized tests.