Release Notes

Finding the year-end student promotion tool is now simpler and your menu is tidier. It has moved out of the main sidebar and onto your Academic Year Management page, right next to where you set up your school years. And when you're between school years — like over the summer — your dashboard now shows a friendly reminder to promote your students into the new year and finish getting set up.

The year-end promotion preview now flags any student whose new grade wouldn't match the grade on their application for the upcoming year — so incoming students like new kindergartners aren't moved up by mistake. You'll see them called out before you confirm, so you can review and adjust.

The year-end student promotion tool can now be safely re-run after an interruption. If the process stopped partway through, students who were already moved up are automatically skipped — so no student gets promoted twice.

Year-end student promotion is now available to school administrators. Move your entire student body up a grade at once, graduate your top grade, and hold any student who needs another year — all with a safety preview before any changes are written.

Internal improvements to how student grade levels are tracked across academic years. No change to what you see on transcripts.

Parents and students no longer hit an access-denied error when clicking an assignment on a class page. Assignment cards are now informational for parents and students — they show the name, points, and due date but do not navigate to the edit screen. Teachers and admins keep their full edit access.

The student lesson view is clearer — each step now shows what kind of activity it is and whether it is done, sent, or needs another try. Steps that need a photo or file upload show a camera icon; read-along steps show a book icon. Submitted work gets a blue "Sent" label, returned work gets an amber "Fix it" label, and approved steps stay green with a checkmark — so a student can see their progress at a glance without reading small grey text. Week sections appear as tidy cards and the step circles spread across the full width of the page instead of bunching in one corner.

Connect an AI assistant to build curriculum — now open to teachers, scoped to the classes they teach.

Teachers can now connect an AI assistant to NavEd Lessons directly from their own account, without needing admin help. The sidebar entry is now called "Connect AI" to reflect that any MCP-compatible AI assistant works — not just one specific tool. Tokens issued by a teacher automatically limit the AI to the subjects that teacher teaches, so there is no risk of the AI making changes outside a teacher's own classes. Admins continue to have full school-wide access as before.

A class's NavEd Lessons supply lists now appear on its Materials tab.

When a subject has NavEd Lessons attached, teachers and admins will now see a "From your NavEd Lessons" section at the top of the class's Materials tab. It shows each published unit's supply lists grouped by week, so staff can see at a glance what students need to bring in. Each unit links directly to the full weekly materials view in NavEd Lessons. The existing Class Materials section for manually uploaded documents is unchanged and still appears below.

Jump between a class's gradebook and its NavEd Lessons units — and see at a glance which assignments came from a lesson.

On any subject's Classwork tab, a "NavEd Lessons" link now appears at the top when the subject has lessons attached, taking you straight to the unit builder. In the Stream tab, the right-hand sidebar shows a NavEd Lessons widget with a direct link for the same purpose. Each assignment card in the Classwork tab also shows a small "Lessons" badge when the assignment was created by marking a lesson step as graded — so it's always clear which gradebook entries trace back to student lesson work.

Going the other way, the unit builder header, the teacher review dashboard, the unit list, and the student unit and step pages all now show the subject name as a clickable link that takes you back to that class's overview.

Lesson steps can now count toward the gradebook.

Teachers can mark any lesson step as graded directly in the unit builder. When a step is marked graded, NavEd automatically creates a backing assignment in the subject's gradebook — no manual linking needed. When approving a student's submission, teachers confirm or adjust the score, and the grade lands instantly in the classwork gradebook.

Teachers now see every student who needs attention before picking a unit.

The "Review Lessons" page opens with a triage board that shows, at a glance, every student across all your units who needs action right now — either work waiting on you to review, or work you returned that the student has not yet resubmitted. Students with the most pending items appear at the top. Each row shows which unit the work is in and a direct link to that unit's review grid. Your full list of units is still there below the board when you want to jump straight to a specific unit.

The teacher review grid now shows five clearly different status colors, and the unit builder's live student preview is now clearly labelled.

In the NavEd Lessons review dashboard, each circle in the student-step grid is now a distinct, saturated color: grey for not yet submitted, blue for submitted and waiting on you, amber for sent back for revision, navy for resubmitted and back in your queue, and green for approved. A color key is shown above the grid so you can read a class's progress at a glance — no more guessing which circles need your attention. Circles also show a tooltip with the exact status when you hover.

In the unit builder, the right-hand panel is now headed "Live student preview" with the name of the step you are looking at. The eye button on the active step is highlighted so it's always clear which step is being previewed. Hover the eye button on any step to see a reminder that clicking it loads that step into the preview panel.

Bulk-loading a full curriculum unit just got faster for onboarding.

When a new school joins NavEd Lessons, we can now load a complete, ready-to-teach unit — all its weeks, steps, and attached worksheets — in one go, instead of building it page by page. Each unit is checked for completeness before anything is saved, linked worksheets and images are pulled into NavEd so the unit stays self-contained, and the unit is set to the current school year and published when it's ready. This means schools can start the year with their curriculum already in place.

Video walkthroughs for the gradebook.

Two new videos for teachers: one shows how to enter grades in a class gradebook, and another shows how to add a new assignment. You'll find them in the "Entering Grades" and gradebook guides.

A video walkthrough for taking attendance.

The "How to Take and Manage Attendance" guide now has a short video showing how to pull up a class, mark students present, absent, or late, and use "Mark All Present" to save time.

Behind-the-scenes reliability fix.

We corrected an issue in how NavEd measures which features schools use most, so we can keep prioritizing the improvements that matter to you. Nothing changes in how you use NavEd.

Find your setup guides anytime from the dashboard.

We added a "Setup guides" card to your dashboard, so you can jump back to the step-by-step setup walkthroughs whenever you need them — not just during your first sign-in.

A guide and video for setting up grade levels.

Setting up your grade levels — Kindergarten through 12th, or whatever your school uses — now has its own step-by-step help guide with a short video walkthrough, plus a "Watch the guide" link right on that step in your getting-started checklist. Every setup step now has a video to follow.

Video walkthroughs for your first setup steps.

Getting your school set up is easier to follow now. We've added short, narrated video guides to the help docs for creating your academic year, adding subjects, inviting teachers, and configuring your grading scale — and put "Watch the guide" links right on those steps in your getting-started checklist, so you can watch each one in a new tab while you work.

Watch the guide right from your setup checklist.

Your getting-started checklist now links straight to a step-by-step video walkthrough. "Add Students" is the first step to get one — tap "Watch the guide" to open the tutorial in a new tab without losing your place. More steps will get their own guides soon.

Hear the welcome video with one tap.

The new-school welcome video starts automatically (muted, with captions), and now has a clear "Tap for sound" button so you can hear it instantly.

A personal video welcome for new schools.

When you finish signing up, your welcome page now greets you with a short video from NavEd's co-founder — a quick tour of your setup steps, plus a direct line to email him if you ever get stuck.

Help guides now include video walkthroughs.

We're adding short video tours to our help docs so you can watch how a feature works, not just read about it. The "Managing Students" guide is the first to get one, with more coming across the documentation.

Groundwork for smoother photo and video uploads in NavEd Lessons.

We've started rolling out behind-the-scenes media handling so the photos and videos you and your students upload in NavEd Lessons are prepared for fast, reliable playback. There's nothing new to click yet — this is the foundation for upcoming improvements, and everything you upload today keeps working exactly as before.

Administrators can now export a student's full portfolio, or delete all of their media on request.

On a student's admin page you'll find a new Media & Compliance Tools card. Export portfolio downloads a single ZIP of everything the student has submitted, organized into folders by subject, unit, and step, plus a ready-to-read summary page listing each step's instructions and any teacher feedback — ideal for sending a family a copy of their child's work. Delete all media permanently removes every photo, video, document, and attachment the student has turned in, for honoring a data-deletion request. Because it can't be undone, you have to type the student's name (or the word DELETE) to confirm first, and grades and coursework history are always kept. These tools are available to administrators only.

A new Portfolio tab gathers a student's submitted work in one place.

The Student Hub now has a Portfolio tab that collects everything a student has turned in across NavEd Lessons, organized by subject, then unit, then step. Each piece of work leads with a thumbnail you can tap to open the full photo, video, or file, and unfinished steps show a quiet "No work yet" note. Students see all of their own work; teachers see the work of students in the subjects they teach; and parents can browse their own child's work for the units a teacher has chosen to share with families. It's a simple, lasting record of a student's learning — perfect for conferences or just looking back on how far they've come.

A clear, published policy on how long student media is kept — and automatic deletion after a student leaves.

Our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy now spell out exactly how long student-submitted photos and videos are kept: about 12 months after a student leaves your school, their media is permanently deleted. This is a genuine deletion of the files, not just hiding them — coursework history like grades stays in your records, but the media itself is removed. School administrators can also remove a student's media sooner if needed. The policy is version-stamped so families always know which version applies.

A quick media-consent step when enrolling younger students.

When you add or edit a student who is under 18, the enrollment form now asks you to confirm your school is authorized to collect that student's photos and videos, with a link to the media and privacy policy. Students 18 and over don't see this step. A younger student can always be enrolled and do written work right away — but photo and video submissions stay turned off for them until the consent box is checked, so families' permissions are respected from day one.

Students can now upload longer videos of their work — up to 100MB.

Recording a clip of a project, a read-aloud, or a science experiment? Students can now upload videos up to 100MB on the submission tile. Big videos are tidied up in the background so they play smoothly for the teacher — and your child's work counts as turned in the moment it uploads, with no waiting around. Photos and files keep working just as before.

A small set of system-reserved subdomain names can no longer be registered as a school address.

Labels used by NavEd's own infrastructure — such as "network", "mcp", and "deck" — are now blocked during school signup, so you'll see a clear message instead of hitting a confusing error later. This has no effect on existing schools.