Our Grade Journey: What’s Changing Now and Where We’re Headed

Jacqueline Koca

Grading is one of the most powerful parts of our LMS/SIS and historically, one of the most complex. Over time, layers of settings, overlapping concepts, and legacy constraints have made grading harder to configure, harder to explain, and harder to evolve.

We’re in the middle of a broader grading journey to change that. This work is happening in phases, and it starts with two foundational updates: the Grading Hub and a renaming of various grading settings. From there, we’re working toward a simpler, more flexible grading model that better aligns with how schools actually think about grading.

What’s Changing Now

The Grading Hub, coming in early 2026, introduces a centralized place for grading managers to maintain their existing grading setting. Instead of navigating across multiple setup pages, grading managers will land on a single hub that brings together key actions, related settings, and visibility into issues that need attention.

Phase one of the Grading Hub focuses on three core improvements:

• Centralized navigation with quick access to commonly used grading settings and lists
• Needs Attention indicators that proactively surface grading issues with direct links to resolve them
• Marking period management in one place, including bulk date updates and formula management

Alongside the Grading Hub, we’re launching a grade renaming project focused on clarity. The goal is to better align grading language with how schools talk about grading and reduce confusion caused by similar‑sounding settings.

Previous Name	New Name
Standard Grading	Traditional Grading
Assessment Grading	Skills-based Grading
Grade Plan Group	Grade Group
Grade Plan	Marking Period
Grade Plan Grade	Grade Column
Assessment Skills	Skills

We know that these naming updates will take some time to get accustomed to. In areas where these settings names were the most important, we’ve included in-product banners that will link you to an outside resource reminding you of what a setting used to be called vs what it is called now. This update is also purely cosmetic; the underlaying function of each setting remains untouched.

We have also made strides to close the feature gaps between our Old Report Cards / Transcripts and our New Report Cards / Transcripts while bringing updates to the new experience that you all are looking for. Some recent updates:

• Grading managers can now see when students and parents have viewed report cards. That way you know who has viewed the report card, and those who may still need to do so.
• Print only specific students from the report card print modal, especially helpful when needing to pull a couple of report cards and a subset of students.
• Increased the decimal precision available on transcripts to increase transparency when needed.

Where We’re Headed: Long-Term Grading Vision

The Grading Hub and renaming work are foundational, but they support a much broader effort to simplify grading, reduce duplication, and create long‑term flexibility. Some of the items in this section are not fully formed decisions but meant to provide a vision into our thought process when it comes to grading.

In the near future, you will see more updates coming to the Grading Hub. For example, you will be able to update report card access dates and grade formulas directly from the hub. A little later in the 25-26 school year, you’ll also be able to run a revamped rollover process directly from the hub, without needing to go into Core!

When it comes to more long-term goals, we plan to consolidate or eliminate grading concepts that add complexity without enough value (such as grade groups, skills-based grading periods, and grade categories) resulting in a cleaner, easier‑to‑understand grading model. The Grading Setup sub-menu currently has 20 different tabs, our goal is to eventually consolidate it to only 12, eliminating nearly half of the setting screens.

While we are working through these updates, we are also looking into what new functionality we can build. For example, we want to combine the Skills, Transferable skills, and Content-area skills settings into a single experience, one screen to manage all of your skills, without needing to think about mapping skills and creating duplicate entries. We also want to give admin a little more control over calculating grades, more specifically calculating grades in bulk, instead of doing so class-by-class.

Expect regular updates concerning our grading journey over time. As always, if you have any feedback, let us know. We truly want to build this new grading structure with your feedback informing the decisions we make along the way.

Your Student Information and Learning Management Product Managers,

Jacqueline Koca and Mike Morrissette

Andrea Crossman

Hi Jacqueline! This is a great post! I'm working on setting up our K-5 division to utilize Blackbaud for gradebooks and report cards in the 26-27 school year. Our 6-12 divisions already use it, but as expected, there are different needs in the Lower School. Referring to your table with the nomenclature updates, is Traditional Grading percentage based scores and Skills Based Grading is more like a standards based grading system? Is it possible to build out a report card that has percentage score values for academic subjects and a more standards based grading scale for work habits & personal development? Thanks!