McLean’s StudentVUE portal (SIS), an application and website which allows students and parents to view grades, report cards, school schedules and more, closed the report cards and grade viewing functions on January 29th. StudentVUE will re-open these functions on Tuesday, Feb. 4th. The program, typically available at all times to enable students to be aware of their course progress and of their marks, is typically closed about a week before each quarter.
“They kept StudentVUE open longer this quarter so that students could have a better idea of what their grades were,” said Bridget Donoghue, McLean’s school based technology specialist. “With that week’s span, when it’s closed, teachers could still be putting in grades, and depending how big those assignments are, those grades could drastically change things.”
Due to the amount of teachers, administrators, students and parents entering the system, students and their parents are stopped from viewing the grades for a short period of time before the quarter’s end, ensuring that administrators and teachers do not have to deal with overuse of the system creating problems.
“There are infrastructure constraints that prevent SIS being open throughout the school year because you have so many users on the system all at once. [This] slows the system or crashes the system, ” English teacher Derek Reagan said.
Although there may be some problems with the StudentVUE system, due to parent pushback, it was decided that the gradebook should stay open longer. The new policy of keeping StudentVUE open until the last day of the quarter is expected to continue in the coming quarters.
“The chance to open the gradebook for students to see where they are [grade wise] for longer, up until grade submissions, is more helpful.” Reagan said. “It allows students to access their grades without having to contact a teacher, counselor or somebody else in order to view their grades.”
Students have received the changes very favorably, enjoying the peace of mind that this new policy brings.
“I really care about my grades,” sophomore Alice Kim said. “The end of quarter is the most important time of the season when I really want to be able to check my grades, so when StudentVUE prevents me from doing that, it is very frustrating.”
