Open Gradebook Initiative Empowers Students, Parents, and Teachers at Great Hearts 

A new initiative called “Open Gradebooks,” is making a significant impact at some of our Great Hearts academies, giving students, parents, and teachers greater transparency and collaboration in the learning process. Cicero Preparatory Academy is one of the first schools to pilot the program, providing valuable insights into its effectiveness.

“Our goal was to open [the gradebooks] up and start to see how it’s working for faculty, how it’s working for students, and for parents,” explained Christa Reichert, Cicero Prep Headmaster. “And then refine it a little bit more to really be able to launch it to more academies.”

For middle school and high school students, the open gradebook encourages a sense of responsibility. With direct access to their grades and assignments through a mobile app called PowerSchool, students are more proactive in tracking their progress and advocating for themselves with their teachers.

Amy Harrigan, a Cicero Prep parent shared how her daughter thrives with access to real-time updates. “She’s somebody that likes to know where she stands,” said Harrigan. She explained that her daughter’s ability to know what’s missing and what needs to be improved on in a class keeps her from feeling lost or overwhelmed.

The Combs family experienced firsthand how the open gradebooks can support students in challenging situations. “In October, our whole family was hit with walking pneumonia, and my sixth grader, my son, missed a week of school,” recounted Heidi Combs. “Because of the access to PowerSchool, I was able to kind of give that power back to him and say, ‘Let’s look at what you’re missing,’ and because of the teachers doing their due diligence to keep track and keep the gradebook up to date, my son was able to look back and say, ‘Okay, this is what I’m missing,’ and then he was able to go and have really honest and healthy conversations with his teachers to be able to make up those assignments.”

Reichert explained that teachers have also embraced the system. “I do think it’s a success because I would say, overall, the teacher morale is higher. They also feel like their conversations with students can now be about particular things in their classroom versus ‘what did I get on that quiz?’ And now they really have a lot more support from the parents as well because parents have the information they need to support their student,” she said. “It’s really allowed us to continue to be a very relational educational model.”

This addition is part of the Prep School Promise, a high school initiative based on parent and student feedback, where we’re working to take the very best that Great Hearts has offered families for over 20 years in classical education and moving it to the next level to improve the high school experience.

As the initiative expands, Great Hearts continues to prioritize its relational and collaborative approach to education, ensuring that students, teachers, and families work together toward academic excellence.

Do you have a story or know of one that you would like to see featured at Great Hearts? Please contact jmoore@greatheartsamerica.org.

Submit a student application to a Great Hearts Academy by visiting: https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/enroll/.