Gradelink Reviews

The integration into our existing system was painful, mainly because our previous processes were primitive and we had some unique requirements being a religious school that is partly a boarding school and partly a local school and serves both high school and college. Gradelink was not setup for that scenario but worked very hard with us to create work-arounds that, after one year, seem to be working well. Their communication included all the methods we needed and replaced a hodge-podge of approaches we had been using. It is now seamless and very useful. Our parents are very appreciative of the improved communication we now offer as well as the mobile app that lets them more easily track their child's progress. Teachers love the ease with which assignments can be created and scored. The addition of Google Classroom integration was huge for our school as we a fully committed to Classroom and can now easily sync grades. Their approach works well with few hiccups once you have the process down.

We were told that we would be able to handle both our high school and our college with one "copy" of Gradelink. This has proved problematic, but GL continues to work with us on solving those problems. There are still problems we are having with transcripts and class rank and hope those get solved before the end of the year.

I like the shared family information, that parents can look at all of their children's grades in all of their classes under one login. I like the ease of communicating with one class or one grade level without having to create my own email groups. I like being able to change and manipulate the reports to our school's needs. I love the helpfulness of customer support and totally appreciate the fact that they stand with us in trying to understand how to make it work for us instead of being short on patience or frustrated with my inexperience.

I still haven't figured out how to end up with one English Literatue and Composition grade that incapsulates literature, writing, vocabulary and spelling classes with their different teachers into one final grade for the report card. As our school grows it would be helpful to have that as part of the program instead of the round about way I am doing it currently.

I chose Gradelink for our school because the basic system had so many components. Other SIS's I researched charged per component. Smartsend Pro makes communication easy. We added the online payment integration for incidentals. Gradelink allows for the flexibility to fit the needs of my school.

Adding on or starting up a new feature and/or personaliztion of the product can sometimes be time consuming.

The software is fully featured, and offers a lot of bells-and-whistles within the basic package (attendance, grades, email messaging, discipline, GPA, reports, report-cards generation, contact info, emergency info, medical records info etc.). For a moderate price, you can add a few more features (e.g. unlimited text messaging, parent/student registration etc). The platform is very intuitive and allows a lot of customization (grade periods, grade scale, weighted grading, own discipline and attendance system etc). Support is well rounded, with a lot of online instructional materials (video and text) and phone support is very responsive. Another nice thing is that you can open simultaneously several accounts (admin, teacher, etc) in the same browser, and it has good security measures (accounts can be blocked by admin, you know who signed last and when, accounts get locked after third wrong singnin attempt etc).

The overall aspect is outdated, the colors are bleak, the whole system looks old school. Also, it behaves weirdly when averaging periods and grades (sometimes), you don't know exactly how it's done.

I needed a program that would be easy to implement, easy to use, and affordable. After reviewing a number of SIS programs, Gradelink met the needs of the school. Having the program for five years I have found new staff members are able to jump in quickly, parents love the ease of communication and availability of attendance, grades, and comments concerning their children. We also use the "news" page to keep parents up to date with reminders and current events. I use the program for snow cancellation and delays, as well as blast informational emails to our community, including alumni.

There are still a couple of pieces of information that take me time to access, including a quick attendance report on an individual student or a readable transcript that is inclusive of attendance, but a part of that might be my lack of knowledge. Customer service has been excellent in helping us customize report cards, something we could not do independently. Some of the staff is still reluctant to use the planning program to its full capacity, I'm not sure if there is an overarching reason or merely a comfortability learning curve.

Gradelink has been user friendly and provides us with all that we need to store our student information and communicate with our families at a reasonable price. The customer service has been great. It is easy for us to call and get help if we get confused or don't understand an aspect of the program. We do not need to set aside days to do teacher training. The program is simple enough that brief training sessions and video links are all we need to train new teachers. Ease of enrollment and re-enrollment are nice as well.

At times, I would like more features, such as digital sign in for our preschool and aftercare. They have a program for that, but it is not what we need, so we will wait patiently for the program to be perfected! :)

When parents enroll, we have found that they can skip certain answers by just putting in a space or a letter, for example. We would like for that feature to some how be fixed.

I like how customizable this program is. We are a tiny school that is self-paced and year-round. It seemed like we could not find a product that checked all of our boxes.

I wish that users could have multiple roles. I have a teacher who is also an administrator. We had to create two accounts for him.

I do enjoy this software immensely! It has a lot of great features, which meld together seamlessly. I have used this software both as a guidance counselor with full admin privileges, and as a teacher. It is easily accessible to parents, and allows teachers to keep parents informed on a daily basis. The platform appears to be solid, and I don't have random "grade changes" while I'm not looking! I've listed four small issues below. When these are fixed, it will be fairly close to perfect, and I will be able to give it five stars all around. As with any multiple-feature computer program, there is a learning curve.
Customer support is always there and willing to talk to us.

1. We cannot set up grading differently for middle school and high school. (We would like 25% per quarter, 10% exam for middle school, 40/40/20 for high school.) 2. We cannot easily select out parent vs. student e-mail in the Communicate section. 3. I would like to ability to write a comment on a transcript that is neither a test nor an award. 4. I would like to have the ability to print out a grade level of transcript. Specifying graduation year rather than grade level would be fine.

My favorite things about Gradelink include no more averaging grades at the end of a term, knowing student grades at a glance, not as many parent questions because they can look in Gradelink, fewer upset parents because they can see conduct issues in Gradelink, the ease of printing report cards, the ease of producing transcripts for high school students, and the speed of getting transcripts ready for students who have already graduated. I am really impressed with Gradelink, and I wonder what I did without it all those years when I first started teaching!

My least favorite thing about Gradelink is the lesson plan set-up. I tried to use it, but it was difficult if I needed to look at something in the grade section, then tried to transition to the lesson plans again. It was also difficult to go from the actual lesson plans to the homework section.

Once you learn it; it is easy to remember how to apply skills and teach others.

There are times when I would like to export information to create mailing labels or rosters for testing and to my knowledge, I am not able to do this with Gradelink.

I love anytime I have a issue with classes, schedules, transcripts or even just a general question, I can contact [sensitive content hidden] at Gradelink and he helps me through anything I need at any given time day or night! He replies back immediately and always saves the day! He is beyond one of the kindest and sweetest representative always helping our school with anything we need!

I like everything about Gradelink I feel it is very easy to use and not complicated to understand. [sensitive content hidden] at Gradelink sends us videos that are so easy to understand plus he is always available to help when we need anything!! I feel like [sensitive content hidden] is key to your company’s success at Gradelink!! He goes above and beyond to always help with anything we need!

I love a majority of everything that Gradelink has to offer. Too many wonderful things to mention.

Little things like the fact that we are unable to put the student's address on report cards, etc. A lot of little things like that. Those little things seem like they should already be options for the database, but they are not. These little things do not really disappoint me enough to not love Gradelink.

Gradelink provides me the opportunity to manage the daily data of the school program which I supervise. Everything that I need to do in my position, including attendance, grades, class listings, and report cards, is provided within the realm of this program.

I wish that Gradelink provided 24/7 support services. As I am located on the East Coast and Gradelink is located on the West Coast, there is a 3 hour time difference between my location and Gradelink's offices. Gradelink does offer customer support each morning beginning at 6:30 AM Pacific time. However, that means that I have to wait until 9:30 AM EDT until I can call for support. Many times, I cannot get an answer, which means that I have to leave a message with the hope of a return call. I think, then, that the one area that Gradelink needs to work on is the providing better technical support.

Gradelink is so easy to use on a daily basis. I refer to it often to record student attendance, look up phone numbers, and check on student information. It is also great for sending messages to parents by email, phone or text. Customer service is wonderful. Whenever we encounter a problem, which is rare, they are always to quick to resolve the issue. Parents are able to access their child's grades on a daily basis to see how they are doing instead of waiting for a report cards or meeting with the teacher.

Some applications take several steps to enter the data. I wish is could be more streamlined.. There are a lot of reports available so it can be confusing at times to determine which is the one I need.

One of the things I appreciate most about Gradelink SIS is it's customer service! Whenever I run into trouble they're always there to help point me in the right direction or fix the problem...though it's most often the former!

There are some reporting features and the ability to email a single financial statement without downloading first that would be helpful, but the feature I like least is the teacher/school news pages. It would be helpful if it had more formatting capabilities with photos, shapes and text boxes.

Attendance and maintaining records with enrollment process that parents had to complete themselves.

Ease of use and having things located in one section for student records

We use to use excel for everything. Too easy to lose data, make mistakes, difficult to handle. Gradelink made us organize better. Better looking report cards, better system for keeping medical records, It made us look more like an 'institution'.

We expected parents to be able to update on their own, and we'd receive notice of changes. Parents had a little difficulty navigating, as well as us, and they felt the 'change' from just filling out paper forms. Somehow they felt they had to do more, when in reality it is less, more condensed, better for us.

I find Gradelink easy to use. I came into the school when the person administering Gradelink had an emergency in her family. I was able to do all of the end of year processes with a little bit of guidance from the Gradelink Customer Service Team. My 'stepping in' became a full-time job with Gradelink Administration being a key component. I love the integration that Gradelink provides for Student Information, Online Enrollment, Website Services, and Payment Solutions.

My own lack of knowledge of SIS. Most things are intuitive, but if it's a process I'm not familiar with, I reach out to the Customer Service Team, who are there right away with guidance for me.