[MACEP] Replacement for AR/Star?

[Mike Ely]

Hello all,

If you've used either of the above products, you can probably guess why 
I'm writing.  What I'm wondering is if anyone has successfully upgraded 
away from Accelerated Reader or Star Reading to anything else, and had 
positive feedback from staff.

Here are my requirements:

1) Must be "good" in the way AR is good.  In other words, the educators 
seem to really like it, and as that's their specialty, I'm going to 
assume that it has strong value.  Any replacement would need to have 
similar strength as a teaching tool.

2) MUST WORK CORRECTLY AS UNPRIVILEGED USER.  Sorry to shout, but one of 
my biggest frustrations with AR and other educational apps is the 
delusion on the part of the developers that Win98 is still current.  I 
do not wish to go around setting chmod 777 to things residing in 
%WINDIR%, nor %PROFILES%\All Users for that matter, and have little 
faith in software that thinks this is neccessary.

3) There is no 3.  It has to be a good educational program, but one in 
which our annual support contract doesn't simply go toward enabling the 
developers to sit back and not stay current with technology.

Looking forward to hearing about somoene's excellent experience with 
another software package.

Cheers,
Mike