The late poet laureate Maya Angelou was quoted as saying, “If you don’t like something, change it.”

It’s a quote high school math teacher Al Bryant seems to live. A former programmer and web developer, Bryant decided that he wanted a better quality of life. “Money isn’t everything,” he said. “I left the computer world for education.”

Still, he couldn’t leave the IT person behind.

“When I first started teaching, I could not believe the terrible software our school system was paying so much money for,” Bryant said. “Half the time, it didn’t work.”

During the eight years Bryant taught math at Alcovy High School, he said, the Newton County School System (NCSS) used three different software packages. He noted what worked and what didn’t, then began to write his own software.
The result was Cram Quest, proprietary software that, Bryant says lets teachers upload their own tests from any word processing software and can be used by students for online practice or for actual assessments.

Because education is data driven, he said, teachers need effective software, not to make their jobs easier, but because the state sets standards students must meet. With educational software, students are most often given multiple choice questions.

The results are analyzed and broken down so teachers understand what concepts the student isn’t grasping. It gives them the tools necessary to work with their students to help them understand basic concepts in subjects such as English, math, science, social studies, fine arts and physical education.

The tools used in Cram Quest, Bryant said, “breaks down [responses] to how many kids chose ‘a,’ how many ‘b,’ ‘c,’ or ‘d.’” Those responses, even if wrong, are snapshot of student’s grasp of the material.

Recently, there has been a move in education away from concrete multiple choice questions to more subjective essay-type responses that demonstrate what a student knows and what proof they can offer to support their statement.
Bryant said questions that call for complex essay responses have been incorporated into Cram Quest. Students explain what they know and how they know it in a response, and teachers are able to grade those responses.

In response to a casting call published in The Covington News, Bryant interviewed to appear on “Shark Tank,” which gives entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their concept or product to successful business people. Bryant said he made it through the first two rounds before deciding he didn’t want to pursue the television appearance.

“They want a percentage of your business,” he said. “The only thing we need money for is marketing. We’re hosted by amazon so we pay a monthly fee to have the classroom.

Earlier, Bryant said they had promoted the software at the online Kick Starter, raising money and investors for marketing Cram Quest. In order to get the money people have pledged to invest, the project needs to raise at least the amount of money the company owner’s requested capital amount. If an owner requests $30,000, they must get $30,000 in contributions and investments before they receive any of the money. If the company raises $29,999, no money is collected from any of the pledged investors.

Cram Quest, Bryant said, had not quite reached its goal in the allotted time, so he is marketing it himself. “It’s an intellectual property, so all we have in it is elbow sweat.

“We have a great product,” Bryant said. “There are so many school districts out there without software because it’s so expensive. I was trying to design something I could sell [and] I can sell it for whatever I want.”

While at Alcovy High School, Bryant said he worked with other freshman-grade level teachers, and beta tested Cram Quest giving three different unit tests to 500 students. The data collected was used to improve the software as well as identify key areas that teachers needed to work on to help students improve grasp of different concepts.

He said he offered the program to NCSS free, but they opted to use different software. Once that new software was purchased, Bryant said, he and the other teachers stopped using Cram Quest.

“Realistically what it all boils down to is a frustrated educator who decided he would write his own software,” Bryant said.
Bryant grew up in Newton County, and with his wife, Gertrude and sons Hudson, Emerson and Mason, has owned a farm on the western side of the county for 10 years. This fall, Bryant started teaching math at Jackson High School. He plans to introduce Cram Quest to those at Jackson High School.

“I’ve been really excited about it.,” he said. “We were very lucky that we didn’t have too many issues.”

According to Shannon Buff, Director of Secondary Education at Newton County Schools, Bryant had submitted information about Cram Quest to NCSS, “but the district was already using Illuminate.”

Bluff said the request for proposals for “a comprehensive student assessment (CSA) solution” was issued on March 27, 2015. Eleven vendors submitted proposals. “The proposal documents were reviewed, evaluated and scored via a multi-stage process by teams of both school and system level personnel.”

Illuminate Education, Buff said, received the highest scores from those assessing the software, providing the overall best value to the school system.

Buff Illuminate Education was selected was because:

• It administers existing NCSS assessments, such as benchmarks and student learning objectives, in electronic and/or paper format whenever necessary;

• allows administrators and faculty to work collaboratively on developing items and assessments; provides comprehensive data management system for all components;

• uses and shares the latest demographic information; provides training and ongoing support for all facets of the solution;

• and has a user-friendly, dashboard-type interface making it easier to report a student’s progress.
The original cost for the Illuminate platform was $80,000 for the Data and Assessment System, Buff said. “In the same contract, we also purchased the Key Data Systems Item Bank with content from for KDS an additional $30,000.”
“This year, when we renewed our contract, the cost for the illuminate Platform was $78,836, the Item Bank $29,563.50 and we purchased an additional 6,000 licenses for the FastBridge Progress monitoring for $36,000.,” said Buff.