James Madison High School recently implemented Jupiter Ed, a PupilPath competitor. So far, Midwood is relying entirely on Google Classroom, which lacks most of this functionality. “It kept me on track and allowed me to set goals for my future.” Teachers were also able to see students’ past grades and test scores. “I miss being able to see my past Regents exams,” said Mahbub. Finding teacher, student, and parent contact information was a breeze with PupilPath, and messaging was quick and simple. “PupilPath made connecting with students, parents, and counselors a lot easier,” said True Crimes teacher Ms. “The color-coded grades were good for me to easily see which class needed improvement,” said Eric Zhao ‘25. Though PupilPath wasn’t flashy, it was convenient and functional. Without the accessibility of an application such as PupilPath, keeping track of grades is much harder.” “I feel it was a necessary action taken by the DOE,” said Rico Zhang ‘25, but the limited functionality of the DOE’s replacement app GAMA “has completely made the action counterproductive and arbitrary. “It made checking grades and assignments a lot harder.” “The discontinuation of PupilPath was severely inconvenient,” said Kenneth Kuang ‘24. Five months later, teachers and students are still mourning the loss. At the beginning of July, students lost access to their accounts. In response, the DOE ordered all schools to cease using PupilPath at the end of the 2021-2022 school year. “My personal data had been compromised and my information was no longer private.” “I felt shocked and appalled,” said Chowdhury Mahbub ‘25. Still, students were understandably concerned. Fortunately, social security numbers and family financial information were not included in the database. On March 25, 2022, the New York City Department of Education released a statement that the personal information of around 820,000 current and former students – names, ethnicities, student ID numbers, and other sensitive details – had been compromised. PupilPath, the grade tracking and school messaging app NYC students used for years, suffered a major data breach in early January, 2022.

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