Ahhh... the joys of teaching in a Bureaucracy

This year marks the third consecutive year where we have a brand-new computer system to deal with. First it was "Verify", a system for taking attendance and other things. It was actually a great system. Easy to use, intuitive, and popular. I'm sure you can see the need to replace it last year with "IMPACT". It was, in short, a train wreck. It kept crashing, was complex to learn, didn't work right, and was a pain. This year we now have "GradeSpeed", a combination attendance and grading system. CPS has outdone themselves this time. Not only do we have an overly complex system, we have a system that takes away one of our most important autonomous rights - grading.

The system has a default grade scale. A=97% B=91% C=84% D=77% F=74%. The only way to change the scale is to have your Principal request the change with the programmers downtown. Otherwise, you have to go in an manually override all of your grades. If you don't use the system for grading, you have to create a basic assignment and override the grade on that.

It is by far one of the most complicated interfaces I have seen in a computer program. There are so many other grading programs out there that are much more user-friendly and effective I think CPS was trying to find the most complicated system.

We're in the process of printing progress reports today and my Principal just came in this morning and told me all of my grades that entered the other day were lost by the system and he's now scrambling to try and fix them. I gave him a print-out of my grades and the programmer is trying to fix them. I'm on my way down there now to see how things are going.

Thank you Arne Duncan for making our lives more difficult for no apparent reason or benefit.