A NY1 story quoted me and other teachers sharing our experiences grading students after the NYC Department of Education (DOE) shut down the flawed Skedula online grading system last year.
“It’s just been really, really stressful, trying to keep track of grades and manage attendance and keep in touch with parents,” I said. My school uses JupiterEd, which combines an attendance, grading, and parent-messaging system in one site. Unfortunately, it has no usable mobile app, its messaging features are surprisingly primitive (it can’t even send mobile text messages of more than 160 characters), and it lacks seemingly obvious features (such as the ability to look at multiple assignment grades from an entire class simultaneously in a spreadsheet-like view).
But at least it works. In contrast, the DOE’s GAMA system isn’t even functional. The DOE has been developing it for months (a New York Post article from March 2022 explained the security breach around the third-party software from Skedula), but has little to show for it.
The complete NY1 story is online at https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/12/16/replacement-grading-system-gets-bad-marks-from-some-teachers.