With the first quarter coming to a close at the end of October, and WA students entering the second quarter of the 2024-2025 school year, the idea of maintaining solid grades looms over their heads.
Last year, WA converted their grading platform from iPass to PowerSchool. After a year of adjusting to the new grading system, WA has decided to open PowerSchool grades for students to view year round. Near the end of the last school year, an open gradebook was tested through PowerSchool, but this year it has officially been made available to students year round.
As a junior in high school, displaying a good academic record for future colleges is always in the back of my mind. This year, having access to my current average grades for all of my classes has been very helpful in allowing me to better understand where I stand in my courses. Therefore, PowerSchool grades should remain open for WA students as they have been so far this year.
The prior iPass platform did not have the technological advancements PowerSchool does, such as being able to download the app on your phone. The majority of WA students downloaded the PowerSchool app on their phones when Westford reworked their system of grading. With this new change, most students have switched to using the app, permitting them to stay updated with their grades.
“I like the app because it helps me always see my grades and have something to compare to,” junior Kaitlyn Pepin said. “If I am struggling in a particular subject, I have the motivation to bring it up now that I can always see my grades.”
The app provides students with the ability to view their current status in each class, any comments teachers have left, their attendance, and class schedule throughout the week. The tools of the PowerSchool app has been useful to me throughout the first quarter of this school year. It has been beneficial in balancing what classes I need to improve in and monitoring my academic performance overall.
Although the new PowerSchool platform has been very helpful, having constant access to grades can be addicting. It only takes a few clicks to open the app and scan my grades. I find myself opening the PowerSchool app on my own time at least 2-3 times a day. Although it is helpful staying up to date with my class averages, when I am waiting on an assessment or an in class assignment to be graded, I can get stressed. Oftentimes, I will continuously refresh the page knowing a grade could be updated at any moment.
However, despite this downside, not having access to our grades often causes an equal, if not greater, amount of stress, especially as the end of a grading period approaches, making it ultimately more beneficial for grades to remain open.
An additional aspect PowerSchool brings to the table is that parents of students are capable of viewing their child’s grades. This incorporation can be beneficial in some scenarios, but it can also cause more stress for teachers and students. Now that parents have accessibility to their kid’s grade book all of the time, they now have updates which allow them the opportunity to have conversations with the teachers themselves.
For WA teachers, it was a large jump switching to PowerSchool. Initially, there was resistance to the change as PowerSchool did not provide teachers with as much student information as iPass previously did. A student’s guidance counselor or dean was not easily found through the new software, but as teachers became more familiar with the system, PowerSchool has been remedied and an overall success.
“As we’ve been working with it, we’ve gotten better at it,” art teacher Ed Hardy said. “It has become easier for us now that one of the new features can connect to Google Classroom and input grades directly from there.”
While PowerSchool took time to get the hang of for WA students and teachers, allowing grades to be seen by students throughout the school year has been generally advantageous. It is important that these grades continue being shown, giving students an accurate representation of their scores in their classes whenever needed.
