STAR Wars

The grading and tardiness programs for T.C. Williams and Minnie Howard were changed this year to STAR.  STAR is designed to blend together these two things and put everything in one place for easy access for teachers and parents.  STAR took the place of Class XP and Integrade Pro, which were separate grading and attendance programs.  This new change brought much frustration to teachers because of the many problems and glitches with the new system.

            Even though there have been so many problems with the STAR program, the change was necessary.  According to Executive Associate Principal Steve Coluntuoni, Pearson Education Inc., who owned and operated Class XP and Integrade, decided to no longer continue with the programs, leaving T.C. to find another option.  Because of this, T.C. had to change over to a new program and all the teachers had to go through training to learn it.  While most schools would start training the staff the year before, Superintendent Morton Sherman decided that they needed to change immediately, giving the teachers and staff from June until August to learn everything. Principal William Clendaniel and Technology Specialist G.A. Hagen are confident that the teachers will be able to adapt and become more used to STAR.

            The confidence of the principals has not yet moved to all the teachers.  World History teacher Molly Freitag is one of the many teachers and administrators having trouble mastering STAR.  “There are many glitches because it is new,” said Freitag. “Also, teachers who work together can’t see everything from their classes together and not all the information has been uploaded yet.”  She also said that with Class XP you could see all of a student’s information in one place, but with STAR, all of that information is not in one place, nor is it easy to access. 

Clendaniel and Hagen partially attribute these problems to the training that the teachers were given over the summer.  They say that there were not enough trainers and that the training needed to start earlier rather than later.  They also said that there was no discussion of going back to old programs nor do they plan on moving away from STAR, but they do hope that the teachers will adjust and the problems will resolve themselves.  Clendaniel also compared the problems that the teachers are having to the problems that were experienced when the school switched over to the old programs many years ago, and says that this will pass, just as that did.

            There have been many problems with the STAR program so far this year, and all the T.C. and Minnie Howard staff are having trouble with the transition.  Both teachers and administrators seem hopeful that these problems will pass and that once the teachers are fully trained and all the information has been put up for easy access, the problems will go away.  But until this happens, everyone will have to continue with what they have now and get used to the new programs and all of its problems.