See what's new in NavEd. Product updates, new features, and improvements for micro school, co-op, and small school management.
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.
Your classes show their teacher again instead of saying "Unassigned".
Classes were showing "Unassigned" on the Classes page even when a teacher had been chosen. The teacher was always saved correctly, so nothing needs re-entering. Every affected class now shows the teacher it already had, new classes keep showing theirs, and renaming a teacher updates their classes straight away.
Electives are unchanged. They keep showing the instructor you typed in when you set them up.
Someone you invited can no longer get stuck between the signup page and the password reset page.
If a person you invited never opened their invitation email, the site used to tell them their address was already registered when they tried to sign up, and send nothing at all when they asked to reset their password. Signing up now points them back to the invitation that is waiting for them, and asking for a password reset sends that invitation link again.
Parents can now see everything they owe your school in one place.
A new Payments page in the parent menu lists any club fees or school forms still waiting on payment, each with its amount and a button to pay it. The same list appears on the parent dashboard whenever something is outstanding. Payments go straight to your school's own Stripe account, exactly as club and form payments already did.
The Account Balance panel has been retired.
It read from an outside accounting system that almost no school was connected to, and when it did have a balance it labelled it "Good standing" regardless of the amount. What a family owes now comes from NavEd itself, so the figure on screen always matches what they will actually be charged.
A student who has left your school no longer shows on their parent's dashboard.
The parent dashboard now lists the same children as every other parent page.
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