(2021-04-28) Higher Ground Education Raises $30M Series D And Acquires Award-winning FreshGrade

Higher Ground Education Raises $30M Series D and Acquires Award-Winning FreshGrade Platform to Accelerate ‘Montessori Everywhere’ Mission. “With all the challenges this past year has brought, it has also created a window to do something dramatically different in education,” said Ray Girn, Founder and CEO of Higher Ground Education. “The Series D investment allows us to continue to be actively and aggressively advocating for Montessori pedagogy as the way of the future.”

One of the immediate outcomes of the new Series D financing is the acquisition of FreshGrade, a digital portfolio and communication tool that gives parents and teachers a truly transparent view of student progress. Since its founding in 2011, over 18 million portfolios have been created on FreshGrade with 85,000 teachers and 1.8 million parents actively using the platform.

Well-suited to both in-person and remote learning environments, FreshGrade captures learning in any form — be it video, audio, tests or quizzes — and delivers it in a newsfeed format familiar to young students. Its ability to track quantitative and qualitative outcomes makes the platform uniquely positioned to support a high-fidelity Montessori learning experience.

“FreshGrade was always built as the answer for people looking for more than what traditional education can offer,” said Lane Merrifield, co-founder and CEO of FreshGrade.

“Our philosophical commitment is to be both pedagogically uncompromising in the programming we offer to children, and to find ways to fully include parents in the education of their children,” said Girn. “FreshGrade is an expression of that commitment

FreshGrade was founded in 2011 by Lane Merrifield and Steve Wandler, and is headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia.