See what's new in NavEd. Product updates, new features, and improvements for micro school, co-op, and small school management.
Assignments created between school terms now file into the upcoming term instead of the end of the year.
When a teacher marked a lesson step as graded during a break between terms, the assignment it created could land in the wrong grading period: the last one of the school year instead of the one about to start. It now files into the upcoming term.
In NavEd Lessons, the grade level picker is now clearly labelled, and if saving a grade setting fails you now see why.
The button for choosing which grade levels a lesson step is for used to say
"add a grade," which was easy to mix up with the separate control for
attaching a step to the gradebook. It now says "add a grade level." Separately,
if a grade-related save fails, the error message is now visible instead of
being shown in a spot that stayed hidden.
Parents can now see the account settings for their child, including updating a login email and sending a password reset.
On some student pages, a few cards further down the page weren't showing up at all, including a child's contact information and a parent's account options. They're all visible now.
You can now email families straight from the gradebook on any class page.
The "Email" button next to the grade matrix, the envelope next to each
student's name, and the envelope on each assignment column now show up
everywhere you view a class gradebook. Message the whole class or one family
at a time, even before you have entered any grades. Once a class has
assignments, you can also message just the families missing that work or
falling below passing.
Correcting a student's email address now keeps their sign-in working.
When a parent updated their child's login email, the change saved but the account
could be left unable to sign in or reset a password at the new address. The new
address now works right away. If the address is already used by another account,
you get a clear message instead of a silent failure.
Deactivated students no longer count against your free limit, and reactivating one now checks that you have room first.
Deactivating a student was still counting against your school's 5 free students everywhere it showed up: the free-limit check, your billing page, and the sidebar counter. Now only active students count. Reactivating a student checks for an open slot first, so your school can't end up over its limit; if there isn't room, you'll be told plainly and can deactivate someone else to make space.
Teachers can now read every lesson unit their school is building.
Before, you only saw the units for the classes you are assigned to teach, so a
department lead could not open a colleague's unit to look at it. Now every
teacher can read all of the school's units, while editing a unit stays with the
teacher assigned to that class.
Parents see what they can do on their child's page instead of a read-only notice.
The note at the side of a child's profile told parents the page was read-only and
to contact the school, even though the buttons to update their child's login email
and send a password reset were right below it. It now says what a parent can
actually change there.
Email confirmation links are now tied to the exact request they were sent for.
A link that confirms a student's new email address now works only for the request
it was issued for, and stops working once that request expires. Nothing changes
for a parent using the link they were emailed.
Student billing now keeps up with your roster after you pass the free student allowance.
In some cases the student count used for billing could stay behind your actual roster, so the amount billed did not match the number of students enrolled. Counts now stay in step. Schools on a flat yearly plan are billed their yearly rate and are never charged per student.
Accepting an enrollment application no longer mixes up a student's own account with a parent's.
In a rare case, accepting an application could relabel a student's own account as a parent account, showing them an empty parent view instead of their grades. Accepting an application now checks for this first, and if a family's setup would cause a mix-up, the application is held so the school's admin can sort it out instead of the accounts getting tangled.
The duplicate-student warning now checks again if you change the name.
When adding a student whose name already exists, you see a heads up before a second record is created. If you then edit the name to a different student who also already exists, you will now see a fresh warning for that name too, instead of it being skipped.
Switching someone from a parent account to a student account now works cleanly.
If a family member was invited as a parent and later needed to be corrected to a student, the old parent listing could stick around and confuse sign-in. Changing someone's role in the Users page now clears out the outdated listing so their account matches their actual role.
Your school's records are now locked to your school.
School records were already separated, but a few pages relied on that separation happening indirectly rather than checking it outright. Every one of those pages now confirms that the person asking is a member of the school they are looking at, before anything is read or changed. Nothing changes for anyone using NavEd normally.
Deleting a student is easier to find and finish.
You can now delete more than one student at a time from the students list, not just one at a time from a student's own menu. The confirmation now accepts a name typed either way ("Last, First" or "First Last") and tells you right away if it doesn't match, and deleting a student now also removes their ability to sign back in at your school.
Every guardian's contact details now show right on a student's profile, without leaving the page.
Clicking "+N more guardians" now opens the rest of the family's contact details in place, each with working Call and Email buttons. The full guardian list further down the page also got working email and phone links, instead of plain text you couldn't tap or click.
Profile pictures for staff and admin accounts now stay visible for good.
A profile photo used to stop displaying about an hour after it was uploaded. New photos now keep working. A photo added before this may need to be added again. Photos are also now kept separate per school, so two schools using the same account name can no longer end up sharing one.
A missing image or file now shows a normal "not found" page instead of an error page.
Routine strengthening of how NavEd hands out uploaded files. Nothing changes for schools on nav.education, and no file, photo, or record was affected.
Internal code cleanup: removed unused code behind the scenes.
Nothing changed in how your school uses NavEd.
Exported student lists now contain the full text of long fields.
Allergies, medications, pickup authorization, medical history, and IEP/504 notes are shortened on screen so the table stays readable. The CSV export was copying that shortened version, trailing dots and all, so long entries came out cut off. The export now gives you the complete entry.
Adding a student now checks if that name is already on your roster.
If you add a student whose name matches someone already on file, NavEd lets you know before creating a new record, so fixing a spelling doesn't accidentally leave you with two records for the same child. You can open the existing student instead, or add the new one anyway if it's genuinely a different child who shares a name.
Profile photos are now filed under the account they belong to.
A person's profile photo used to be stored under whatever their username happened to be, so renaming someone left their photo filed under the old name. Photos are now filed under the account itself, which does not change when a name does. Photos already uploaded are untouched and keep working. Usernames containing a slash are now turned down with a short message instead of being saved.
Some schools couldn't save their settings page at all.
If a school's logo or banner had been uploaded years ago in a file type NavEd no longer accepts for new uploads, saving anything on the settings page, even just the school's name or colors, failed with a confusing error. Existing logos and banners are now left alone; only a genuinely new upload is checked against the accepted photo formats.
The grade picker in NavEd Lessons now stays open while you scroll it.
When a step's grade list was long enough to need scrolling, scrolling it could close the picker and jump the page instead. It now scrolls on its own, and reopening it starts back at the top so "Everyone in this class" is always the first thing you see.
"Add a grade" and grading toggles in NavEd Lessons now work the way they look like they should.
Clicking "add a grade" on a lesson step now opens the grade-level picker instead of doing nothing, and turning a step's grading toggle on or off now actually shows or hides its points field. Both were silently broken for every school using NavEd Lessons; nothing you set up or graded was ever affected.
The free transcript generator now supports courses your student is currently taking.
You can now mark a course as "In Progress" instead of leaving it off the transcript, so a senior's current-year classes show up like colleges expect. In-progress courses are shown clearly on the page and in the PDF, and don't count toward GPA or credits earned until a final grade is entered.
Some totals and labels that were hard to read in dark mode are now clearly visible.
A payout's totals summary and a few status labels on forms and widgets could show up as light text on a light background when a school was using dark mode. These now display with proper contrast.
Some internal developer notes were also showing on the form response page and no longer do.
A security tightening on where NavEd sends you when a page can't take you where you expected.
We closed a gap where certain redirects could have sent you to an outside site instead of staying on NavEd. Links like these now always keep you inside your school's own site. This same fix now covers a few more pages, including school settings, where an error message could also show more than it should have.
Payout details now explain more clearly why a family name is missing on a line.
On a deposit worksheet, a payment with no family name now says why: whether it looks like it was taken directly in Stripe rather than through NavEd, or whether it came through NavEd but couldn't be linked to a family. Either way, the money was always counted correctly in your totals; only the explanation was unclear.
Withdrawing a student's photo and video permission now always sticks, and submitting an enrollment application twice no longer creates two students.
Turning off a family's photo and video permission for a student could quietly get undone if someone else saved a different change to that same student around the same time. Withdrawing that permission now always sticks, no matter what else is being saved on the student at the same time.
Submitting an enrollment application twice, like from a double click or a slow connection, could also create two student records once the application was approved. NavEd now recognizes a repeat submission of the same application and creates only one.
Parents at a school that hasn't set up grading periods yet can now see their children's page instead of an error.
If a school hadn't yet set up its grading periods for the year, parents landed on an error message instead of their kids' dashboard. Now the dashboard shows normally, with a plain note that grade trends will appear once grading periods are set up.
Community service entries no longer lose what you typed if they don't save.
If a service hours entry didn't save because of a mistake, like a typo in a date, NavEd now keeps what you typed instead of clearing the form, so you can just fix the problem and save.
Photo uploads now work the same way everywhere: school logo, banners, and profile pictures.
Uploading a school logo, a banner, a class banner, or a profile picture now follows the same rules in NavEd. Photos saved by Windows in formats like ".jfif" are now accepted on all four, each with a clear 5 MB size limit and a helpful message if a file is too large.
Cancelling and retrying a paid form now works the way it looks like it should.
If a family started filling out a paid form, backed out before paying, and came back to try again, NavEd used to quietly throw away everything they just retyped and re-signed, and charge them against their first, abandoned attempt instead. That's fixed: cancelling closes out the old attempt for good, so starting over creates a clean new one with exactly what was just entered.
A club payment link sent to more than one guardian can no longer be paid twice.
When a club fee's payment link went out to more than one parent or guardian on a student, each could complete payment separately, so a family could end up paying for the same club registration twice. Sending the link to every guardian is still fine; only one payment for that fee goes through now.
A club payment link sent to more than one guardian can no longer be paid twice.
When a club fee's payment link went out to more than one parent or guardian on a student, each could complete payment separately, so a family could end up paying for the same club registration twice. Sending the link to every guardian is still fine; only one payment for that fee goes through now.
Forms can now collect a real electronic signature.
Some agreements need more than a checkbox. Enrollment agreements, permission slips, and other forms in NavEd Forms can now include a signature field: the signer reads the agreement text, types their full legal name to sign it, and checks a box confirming they're agreeing to sign electronically. That works whether the person filling it out has a NavEd login or is signing from a public link a school shares on its own website.
Every signature keeps a record of what was actually agreed to: the exact wording at the moment it was signed, the name typed, and when and how it was signed. If a school edits the agreement text later, past signatures still point at what was actually signed, not the new wording.
This feature records what was signed and when. It is not legal advice, and for agreements with real consequences, a school should confirm with its own counsel.
A behind-the-scenes reliability pass on where NavEd sends you after you save something.
Saving a student's edits when your session had quietly expired could bounce you through an extra, unnecessary step before landing back on your student list. That extra step is gone. We also went through the rest of NavEd's internal links and made them sturdier against this same kind of drift, so a future update is far less likely to leave anyone on a broken page after saving.
A behind-the-scenes privacy improvement to how account activity is recorded internally.
A behind-the-scenes privacy improvement to how account activity is recorded internally.
Student photos now save, and you can add one to a student you already have.
Adding a photo to a student appeared to work, but the picture was never stored where NavEd looks for it, so it showed as broken or missing afterwards. Photos added from now on save correctly and stay put.
Until now a photo could only be attached while creating a student, so an existing student could never be given one. A student's edit page now has a photo field, showing the current picture if there is one.
Photos added before today cannot be recovered, and those students now show their initials rather than a broken picture. If a student's photo is missing, open that student and add it again.
A behind-the-scenes security improvement to how signing in works across your school's web address.
We tightened the way your sign-in carries over between your school's web address and the main NavEd site. Nothing changes about how you log in, and you do not need to do anything.
Printed pages no longer cut off the right edge of a table.
When you printed a transcript, a student's profile, or a class schedule, the last column of the table could be cut off the page. These pages now print with every column fully visible.
Keep a record of community service hours.
A student can now keep a record of community service hours right alongside their grades: the date, the organization, how long, and what they did. It groups by organization, adds up a total, and prints as its own sheet to send with a scholarship application. You can export it as a spreadsheet too. Each entry can name a supervisor and contact so the organization can vouch for it. It is separate from the transcript and never touches grades or credits.
Applications now collect a way to reach the family, and approving several kids from one family only asks for their guardian once.
Filling out your enrollment application now asks for the guardian's name, email, and phone up front, once per application, not once per child. That means when you approve, that contact information is already there for you to confirm instead of typing it in from memory. A family applying with more than one child now shows one guardian box and a checkbox for each child, so approving all of them creates one guardian account, not several.
We also fixed a case where a typo in one child's information used to clear out everything else the family had typed for their other children. Now only the field that needs fixing is empty; everything else stays exactly as they entered it.
You can now actually create an enrollment application, right from the Forms page.
Application forms have worked behind the scenes for a while, but there was no way to start one: the "New Form" page never asked whether you wanted a regular form or an enrollment application. Now it does, with a plain choice between the two and a note that it's a one-time decision. Enrollment applications stay free on every plan, and the New Form page is reachable on every plan too, so a free-tier school never has to hit a paywall just to see the choice.
A couple of small builder cleanups ride along: leaving the confirmation message blank now gives an application a message that fits ("Thank you for applying!") instead of club-sign-up wording, and the "Applicant (New Child)" field option only shows up on application forms, not on every ordinary form you build.
Approving an application now respects your plan's student limit.
Approving a new application creates the child's enrollment right away, and now it checks your plan's student limit first, the same way adding a student directly already does. If approving would put you over your free limit, you'll see a clear message telling you to add a payment method, and nothing is created until you do. Families are never shown anything about this. It's between you and your plan.
A family can now fill out your enrollment application, not just start one.
Application forms were shareable on every plan, but the part where a family actually enters their child's information was missing. That gap is closed: your application, whether opened in NavEd or from the public link you share on your own site, now has a place for a child's name, date of birth, and grade. A family with more than one child applying can add each one to the same application with a single click.
We also tightened up the details: a name or date of birth left blank is caught with a clear message instead of a confusing error, a birth date can't be entered in the future, and submitting the same application twice, whether from a slow connection or an itchy back button, still only creates one.
Your payments page only asks for club fees from the school year you're in now.
If your family joined a club in a past school year, or joined one the school later switched off, that fee could still show up under "Waiting on payment" with a Pay button, even though the school was not collecting it. Those fees no longer appear. Club fees for the current school year are unchanged.
Approve an application and the family is enrolled, no separate step.
Building and sharing an enrollment application already worked on every plan. Now approving one finishes the job: reviewing a submission and clicking Approve creates the child's enrollment and the guardian's account in the same moment, and an email goes out inviting the family to set up their own login. Declining works just as simply, and it never contacts the family on NavEd's behalf. Your school decides what to tell them and when.
Downloads catch up too. A roster or response export from an application now shows the children who applied, instead of a blank sheet.
Set up a tuition plan, put families on it, and get paid.
You can now build a tuition plan in one sentence, like "families pay $450 on the 15th, 10 times, starting in August," and add each family's children to it. Families see what they owe and pay with a tap, no card kept on file and nothing charged automatically. Paying by check, cash, or state funds works too: your school can record any of those in a couple of clicks, right alongside the card payments.
Staff can have a photo instead of initials.
Students and parents have been able to have a picture for a long time. Teachers and school administrators could not, so a staff page always showed initials with no way to change it. A school administrator can now add a photo from a staff member's page, where it appears in place of their initials, and in the school directory.
Two things this does not do yet. Teachers cannot set their own photo, only an administrator can. And the photo does not replace the initials in the sidebar or the top bar. Both are coming.
Application forms now work end to end, on every plan, including free.
An enrollment application only does its job once a family without a NavEd account can actually open it. Building an application form was already free on every plan, but the shareable link a family clicks to fill it in only worked on paid plans, so a free-tier school could build an application and have no way to hand it to anyone. That gap is closed: your application's public link now works wherever you're building it, an application fee can be collected on it if you charge one, and the Forms link now shows up in your sidebar instead of hiding behind an upgrade prompt.
Announcement emails now reach the school that sent them, and you can give different grade levels different work in the same class.
If you published an announcement with email turned on, the announcement appeared in the portal but the email could silently fail to go out. That is fixed. Nothing about how you write or publish an announcement changes.
If your class holds more than one grade level, you can now say which grades a piece of work is for. Open a lesson step in the builder and it reads "This step is for everyone" by default, exactly as before. Choose one or more grade levels and only those students see that step, open it, or turn it in.
Students in the other grades are not shown the step at all, and your progress view marks them "Not assigned" rather than "Not submitted", so nobody looks behind on work that was never theirs. Everything you have already built is unchanged and stays for everyone until you say otherwise.
Class banner images upload properly, and grade levels can now be marked as elementary, middle, or upper school.
Uploading a banner to a class page could fail with an error page instead of saving, most often when the picture came straight off a phone or camera. Those images now upload normally, and a picture NavEd genuinely cannot use gets a short explanation of which formats to try instead.
Grade levels also have a school level again. The Academic Grades page has always shown an Elementary, Middle School, or Upper School label on each grade, but there was no way to set it, so every grade a school created read "Unassigned" forever. You can now choose it when you create a grade level or any time afterward.
Everywhere NavEd handles club money now agrees on when a fee can be paid.
Following on from the change below. A club signup from a finished school year, or from a club a school has switched off, is no longer treated as a bill when a family signs up, when they open a payment link, when a reminder goes out, or in the club roster's outstanding total. A family that already paid still sees their receipt, and what they paid still counts in the school's records.
The Payments page now shows real tuition information instead of a placeholder.
The "Coming Soon" tuition tile on the Payments page has been replaced with a working section. Once your school has a tuition plan running, you'll see how much has been collected against what's expected for the year, what's due next, and any payments your school recorded by hand.
A recorded media consent can now be withdrawn.
Unchecking the media consent box on a student's page now withdraws it, with a confirmation step first so it can't happen by accident. For students whose school requires it on file, this stops new photo and video uploads until it's recorded again; written work is not affected.
Files you open from NavEd now always open as the kind of file they really are.
When a student turns in work, or anyone uploads a logo or an attachment, NavEd now decides how that file should open based on the file itself rather than on what the uploading computer said about it. Photos, videos and school branding still preview right on the page exactly as they did before.
Turning in a typed assignment or a slideshow no longer needs photo permission.
NavEd Lessons asks some schools to confirm they're allowed to collect a student's photos and video before those uploads go through. That check now only applies to photos and video: a typed assignment, a PDF, or a slideshow turns in normally for every student, with or without that permission on file.
Removing your last accepted file type no longer accepts every file type by accident.
If you narrowed a lesson step to a specific file type, like .docx, and then removed it, the step quietly went back to accepting every file type instead of staying narrowed. You can no longer remove your last accepted format by mistake. To go back to accepting every file type on purpose, choose "Any file type" from the "add a format" menu.
Turn in work your way, with the file types your teacher expects.
You can now turn on "students turn in work" for any lesson step right in the unit builder, choose what kind of work it is, and set exactly which file types you'll accept: no more guessing whether a paper has to be a .docx or a slideshow a .pptx. We also widened the list of accepted files to include PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and more photo formats. If a student's file doesn't match, they get a friendly nudge telling them exactly what to try instead, and their work is never lost.
Added a way to record photo and media consent, right on a student's profile.
When you add or edit a student, you can now check a box confirming your school has permission to use that student's photos and other files. Some schools require this before a student can turn in files, so if a student can't submit their work, this is the first place to check.
Write a class description without hunting for it.
The Add Class and Edit Class pages now have a spot to describe what a class covers. Staff can read it on the class's Settings tab, and for electives, it also shows to families choosing their classes.
Fixed a sign-in loop that could trap already-logged-in users on an endless "too many redirects" error.
A small number of people who were already signed in got stuck bouncing back and forth between pages after clicking a login link, ending in a browser error instead of their dashboard. We tracked down the cause and fixed it so signing in always lands you where you meant to go.
Mark work on mastery instead of a score, straight from the class page.
In any class gradebook you can now type MA, PR or NI into a grade box instead of a number, for Mastered, Progressing and Needs Improvement. Parents see the mark on their child's profile. Typing a number still works exactly as before, and typing one over a mark replaces it.
Classes you have marked as elementary in your grade level settings get a little more: the three marks are listed across the top of the gradebook so nobody has to remember them, every empty box shows them as a reminder, and the weighted average column is hidden, since a class marked on mastery has no percentages to average.
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