Though students’ grades are already available online, it is customary for MCPS students to have a half -day of school halfway through the marking period while teachers work on completing student interims to be subsequently mailed out to parents.  Because Edline already provides parents and students with access to grades at any time, interims are not as essential as they once were, yet money is still spent to mail them out.
 According to assistant school administrator John Taylor, the purpose of interims is to provide parents and staff with a picture of a student’s performance in his/her classes and to show where improvement may be necessary.  This year, MCPS took over the mailing of student interims rather than leaving individual schools with the responsibility as had been done in previous years.
While MCPS’s direct participation in this process helps simplify the interim process, some parents did not receive interims last quarter until well over a week after the teachers had reported the grades.  By the time the interims were received, most students’ grades had changed, resulting in outdated and irrelevant progress reports.  If the point of an interim is for parents to see how well their children are doing in each class and to give students time to reevaluate their study habits, receiving outdated grades is by no means helpful.
With students and parents’ ability to track grades on Edline at any given time, the need for interims is less significant.  Instead of waiting until the quarter is halfway through, students and parents can simply track grades as each assignment is posted.
According to Taylor, MCPS decided to control the printing and distributing of interims this year because it was more efficient and cost effective to process them at a central location.
Despite these savings, it still costs money to process and mail interims—money that could be used to fund more significant investments.  MCPS has gone through many budget cuts this past year, resulting in, among other things, fewer teachers and larger class sizes.  CHS Signature Programs were even on the verge of being cut last year.  In light of these budget cuts and the diminished relevance of interims, it is questionable whether interims are a good way for MCPS to use funds from its already tight budget.
 According to Taylor, while most students have computer access, not all students do.  At CHS, 95 percent of students have active Edline accounts, but at many other MCPS schools, this number is significantly lower. Thus, interims cannot be completely phased out for the entire school system. 
However, there are still ways in which MCPS can provide parents and students, even those without active Edline accounts, with a student’s interim report without spending the time and money printing and mailing interims to each and every MCPS student.  For example, at the beginning of the school year, parents could be asked whether they would prefer to check Edline or have their child’s mid-quarter interim mailed home.  This way, those students who need their interims distributed can still receive them, while MCPS does not have to waste money on those students who do not need them.