College and Career Readiness Software: A Buyer's Checklist

Start with the jobs, not the feature list. Write down what has to get done, then score every vendor against it.

Ask what the assessment measures and what it leaves out. JobCannon's class assessment measures interests and personality, not skill level. It is not a test of academic proficiency and not a credential.

Settle student data early. This page does not say that any product, ours included, is compliant with either law. That is for your own counsel to decide. The FERPA guide and the COPPA guide set out what each law asks and where we stand. These are the questions to put to every vendor, with our answers.

Caseload. A counselor with a large caseload needs one list: who has finished, who has not, and the result next to each name. On a class link that is the class report. Across a caseload, emailed invite lists give per-person completion tracking and automatic reminders. See district counselor caseloads and the caseload management guide.

ESSA and Perkins V. Federal law leaves most of the definition of career ready to the state. ESSA asks each state to add at least one indicator of school quality or student success, and the state chooses it. Perkins V fixes a list of reporting indicators and leaves one for the state to set. An assessment is one piece of that evidence, not the whole measure.

Ask each vendor exactly what comes out. Ours: you can use the underlying data; you cannot press a button and get a submission. What comes out is a CSV of results: who completed what, when, and their outcome. There is no EdFacts-formatted export, no state-SIS-shaped file, no CCRI indicator calculation and no year-over-year progression view. Reports carry outcomes rather than individual item answers.

For where an assessment can fit, read the ESSA guide and the Perkins V guide. For evidence and the cohort CSV, see high school college and career readiness. Your state plan says what counts.

Setup. Ask who does the rollout. Ours: you roll it out, we do not. There is no implementation service, no parent-communication template and no recorded training course. A rollout needs almost no configuration: generate a class code per school or year group, share it, and students are answering within seconds with nothing provisioned per student. Staff are added one at a time as administrators, and there is no bulk import.

Cost. Ask for the unit before the price: per student, per school, per assessment, per seat, or one contract for a district. Then divide by the students enrolled, not by the students you expect to finish. Ask what is inside the price, and whether the first year costs more than the later ones.

Ours: the Education Licence is one rate per enrolled student for the academic year, set by enrolment band, with assessments uncapped, retakes included and the school administrator dashboard in the price. It is invoiced against a purchase order. The rates and bands are on the school districts page and the schools page, so you can multiply your own enrolment before you talk to anyone.

Put these to every vendor, including us. Our answer sits under each question. If an answer is "it depends", ask for it in writing.