Administrator Sharing for the Free Gradebook
Applies to the free gradebook only — not the Enterprise SIS, where administrators already have access of their own.
Teachers on the free gradebook ask us some version of the same question regularly: how do I share this with my principal? It usually starts with the principal — a request for a grade summary, a list of students who are struggling, or a progress report ahead of a meeting.
In version 12, the answer will be an invitation. A teacher will be able to give up to five administrators read-only access to their gradebook, and it will be part of the free gradebook, not a paid add-on.
Families will get the same kind of access for evaluators and cover schools, as described in Introducing iGradePlus Homeschool. This post is about what it will mean in a classroom.
How it works today
The free gradebook is built for one teacher. Each account has a single sign-in, and the gradebooks in it belong to the teacher who created them. For a personal gradebook, that is the right default.
Sharing a gradebook isn’t available. A teacher has no way to give a principal, a counselor, or any other colleague access to their gradebook. When an administrator wants to know how a class is doing, the teacher is the only person who can look.
That isn’t a defect. The free gradebook was built around a teacher’s own work, and for that it is shaped correctly. What it has never had is a way to show that work to the other people responsible for the same students.
What will change in iGradePlus 12
Every gradebook will be able to have two kinds of people in it:
Your gradebook
├── You ← everything, as today
└── Up to five administrators ← your students and their grades, read-only
You invite them, you decide who they are, and you can take their access away whenever you choose. Nothing about how you use the gradebook yourself will change.
Access, not a copy
An administrator you invite will sign in to iGradePlus with their own account and open your gradebook itself, so what they see is always current — the grades as they stand that morning.
That changes what a request looks like. A principal who wants to know how a class is doing before a parent meeting can look. A counselor who wants to see how a student is doing in your classes can look. You invite someone once, and the questions they would have brought to you become questions they can answer on their own.
Up to five people
Each gradebook will be shareable with up to five people. That covers the people with a real reason to see a class’s grades — a principal, an assistant principal, a counselor, a department head, and a special education case manager or instructional coach — so you won’t have to pick just one.
We’ll call all of them administrators, because that is the word teachers already use. Whoever they are, the access is the same: read-only, and limited to the gradebook you invited them to.
What administrators will see — and what they won’t
An administrator will see the students in the gradebook you shared, and their grades. They will not be able to change anything — not a score, an assignment, a comment, or a setting.
Your private notes stay private
The notes you keep on students for your own use will not be part of what an administrator sees. A private note is only useful if it stays private, and inviting your principal shouldn’t mean second-guessing what you write.
Your students, not your activity
Administrators will see your students’ work, not a record of yours. Nothing will show when you last signed in, when you entered a grade, or how often you make changes. Sharing a gradebook is about the students in it; it will not be a way of watching the teacher who keeps it.
You decide who can see it
Invitations will go to a specific person. You will invite someone by their email address, and only that person will be able to accept. There will be no shareable link that could be forwarded, posted, or opened by someone you didn’t mean to invite.
You will know what you are sharing before you share it. Before an invitation goes out, iGradePlus will show you exactly what that person will be able to see.
You will always know who has access. Each gradebook will list everyone who can currently see it, and you will be able to remove any one of them at any time without affecting the others. With one person you would remember who it was; with five, the list is how you stay sure.
When several teachers invite the same person
A principal is likely to be invited by more than one teacher. They will see each of those gradebooks listed separately, by teacher, and open them one at a time.
Gradebooks will never be combined into a single view or set side by side for comparison. Each one stays exactly what its teacher chose to share, and stays that teacher’s to withdraw.
Administrators in the Enterprise SIS
In the Enterprise SIS, administrators are already part of the school’s own account. They sign in as staff, and what they can see — which can include the grades, assignments, and attendance of every class in the school — follows from their role and privileges. There is nothing for a teacher to share, because the gradebooks already belong to the school.
Administrator sharing is for the other case: a teacher whose gradebook is their own.
What this will mean for you
- If you teach on the free gradebook, a request to see your grades can be answered once, with an invitation — and the notes you keep for yourself stay yours.
- If you are a principal or administrator at a school where teachers use the free gradebook, you will see current grades in the gradebook itself, whenever you need them, without having to ask.
- If you are a counselor, case manager, or coach, you will be able to check on a student before a meeting without first asking a teacher to pull something together.
- If your school wants every teacher’s grades in one place, with school-wide reporting and one record for each student across all of their teachers, that is what the iGradePlus SIS is built for.
- If your school already runs the Enterprise SIS, nothing changes. Your administrators already have access of their own.