At the start of the 2023-2024 school year, the Middletown Township School District made the decision to switch over from Powerschool to Genesis as their platform for grades, schedules and other educational functions. Students and Staff at Middletown High School North were interviewed on their opinions regarding the switch and how they feel about the new platform after about a month of use.
When looking at the switch from a student standpoint, students preferred the old platform (Powerschool) because of the familiarity factor. A survey was conducted amongst some of the students at North where they were asked about their feedback, both positive and negative, while also sharing their input on the platform overall.
When asked about positive aspects of Genesis, students often just said it was too early to tell. Those who did have positive things to share, talked about how they liked how colorful the platform was, how the grades are more accurate since they include decimals, and how it can be very useful if the district ends up putting the “community service” page to use.
Looking at it from a staff perspective, they tend to feel similarly to students. Mr. St.Clair, a chemistry teacher at North who has worked in the district for around 19 years said, “I am willing to give Genesis a chance. I need to get used to it. What I like about Genesis is how I can put assignments in for multiple classes at once and adjust the dates to each specific class”.
Another teacher, Ms. Gehrsitz teaches freshman english said, “I like it because we have access to a lot more information about the kids and way more options on how to view things, but I would also say I’m struggling to adjust to it because everything looks so different and the way it grades is so different and I am a bit of a creature of habit”. Both teachers express how they see many positive and negative aspects within the platform and once they get used to it, it will be a lot better in their eyes.
Complaints about the platform often related to the fact that there was no easily accessible app, no notifications, and the difficulty of navigating through the platform. With this new transition, the expectation is that there might be some bumps in the road. Sophomore, Jack Kelly said, “It’s more complex than power school which makes it harder to check my grades”.
Junior, Ren Howard also said “We can’t access our previous years’ grades in Genesis and that we have to go directly to PowerSchool instead. It’s not entirely the program’s fault, and it’s more so because of the switch”. Students also voicd their frustration in which the automatic “0”, before any grade is entered into Genesis, is a little irritating”.
Lastly, students were asked which platform they preferred overall and 100% of students said Powerschool. So far, it has only been about a month since the platform was implemented so thoughts could change as students and staff get used to Genesis.
