Changes in grading software on the horizon

For more than 15 years, Edline and Gradequick have been critical parts of the academic process in Brevard County, providing students a quick and secure way to view the grades for their courses and teachers an organized and efficient way to keep grade records. However, due to a recent lack of support from the company and a difference in visions between the two organizations, it might be time to part ways.

“The support that the company [Edline] is giving to help with Edine and Gradequick is going away,” Assistant Principal of Curriculum Glenn Webb said. “Many problems we have are problems we have to live with because we’re not going to have any tech support, so we’re going to need a new platform. We just don’t know what that is yet.”

Webb doesn’t attribute the divide completely to Edline’s growth but more to the different direction the company is taking.

“Edline has gotten big,” Webb said. “But over the years they’ve just become obsolete because changes based on the needs of their organization don’t match up well with how it was originally designed, so I think it’s more age than size.”

The main issue that students and parents have with the grading process isn’t the software itself, but rather the frequency that teachers update grades.

Junior Alex Nixon is indifferent to a change in grading software, but hopes that teachers will update more.

“I don’t care what software we have,” Nixon said. “As long as teachers use it to update grades so we can see them quickly and have an opportunity to fix them before it’s too late.”

Junior Auston Gonzalez agrees with Nixon that improvements to the grading process are dependent on the teacher.

“It just depends on the teacher because some teachers don’t really care about updating Edline all the time,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think the software matters because teachers are still the ones inputting a grade.”

Though a mandatory weekly grade report was considered, Webb thinks this will be counterproductive and hopes that the new software will have a live feed of the students’ grades from the digital grade book.

“We could set up a weekly grade report, but when it’s a mandatory push out you’re effectively telling teachers that it’s possible what they’re doing is not good enough,” Webb said. “Plus it might not be effective or efficient for them and lead to rushed or sloppy grades and we try to meet the needs of everyone: parents, students and teachers in order to be as fair as possible. It would be nice for parents and students to have an automatic access to the grades that are sent out every week because transferring grades from Gradequick to Edline is just another step that teachers have to take and just contributes to inefficiency in the whole grading process.”

The timeline for the transition is unclear, but Webb ensures that there will be a change.

“Eventually we are going to switch [software],” Webb said. “The district still hasn’t decided on a new platform and with training teachers, administrators and families it looks like it’s not going to happen yet and we are going to keep Edline and Gradequick at least for the next year.”

By Madhav Pamidimukkala