MCPS rolled out myMCPS portal and myMCPS Classroom as a replacement of Edline for the 2017-2018 school year. These services will enable students to check grades and keep up to date with school work, among other functions.

The implementation of myMCPS poses a burden for students, who were previously dependent on EdlineHelper, a third party app, to easily check their grades. To address students’ confusion in the transition of Edline to myMCPS, Solomon Sapiro, a Wootton Class of 2017 graduate and current freshman at University of Maryland, created myMCPS+ to help students monitor their grades by creating a replica of EdlineHelper for the new myMCPS.

“Essentially, my app helps students by adding and modifying assessments, like Edline Helper did, to test how their grades would be affected,” Sapiro said. “MyMCPS+ aims to fix the problem of students not being fully aware of the effect of certain assignments on their grades.”

MyMCPS+ was created in response to the student outcry at the realization that EdlineHelper, a popular app that allowed students to calculate theoretical grades, would no longer be available because of shift from Edline to the new myMCPS.

“I have no idea how to do anything anymore,” sophomore Adam Horowitz said. “I have to have my mom tell me my grades—that’s how hard to understand the new system is.”

The new myMCPS portal was created to achieve MCPS’s long-term goal of phasing out of Edline and shifting to its own, exclusive system, since Edline was costly and did not fulfill all the needs of educators.

The app also helps students to solely see their grades, whereas the new myMCPS portal has a very different layout than Edline, confusing even the most perceptive students.

According to Sapiro, when students are more aware of their grades, they can better manage them and know what they need to do on individual assignments to achieve a certain overall grade.

While the myMCPS+ mobile app does not address all the flaws of myMCPS, it is a useful tool for students.

“There’s still a long way to go,” Horowitz said. “But the app is a step in the right direction for understanding the new grading system.”