Release Notes

A new blog post was hiding from search engines—we found it and brought it back.

Our "What Is Standards-Based Grading?" article published this week, but because of a small formatting quirk in the file, it never made it into our sitemap. Search engines like Google and Bing use the sitemap to discover new content, so without that entry, the post was effectively invisible to anyone searching for it.

The post itself was always accessible if you had the direct link, but we want every piece of content we write for educators to be as easy to find as possible. We've fixed the post and added a safeguard so that similar formatting issues in future posts won't cause the same silent disappearance.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Restored standards-based-grading-guide to the sitemap so search engines can index it
• Added a defensive check in the blog post parser to handle formatting edge cases gracefully

The Payment Settings page just got a fresh coat of paint—and a few thoughtful touches.

We redesigned the Payment Settings and Stripe onboarding pages to match the rest of NavEd's modern look. But it's not just cosmetic. We also made the experience friendlier for school administrators setting up payments for the first time.

The "Connect with Stripe" screen now features a trust message so you know your banking details are never stored by NavEd. We replaced technical Stripe jargon like "Accept Charges" and "Receive Payouts" with plain language—"Collect tuition payments" and "Receive funds to your bank." And if Stripe is reviewing your information, the page now clearly tells you no action is needed on your end.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Removed 71 lines of custom styling in favor of NavEd's design system
• Added accessibility attributes to all decorative icons
• Upgraded the "Account Disconnected" alert to make the severity clearer

The gradebook now tells you what to do when quarters haven't been set up yet—instead of crashing.

If a teacher tried to open the gradebook for a subject whose school year hadn't been fully configured yet (specifically, no grading quarters set up), the page would return a server error. There was no explanation—just a blank failure. That's fixed.

Now, if you land on the gradebook tab and no quarters exist for that subject's session year, you'll see a clear message: "No grading quarters have been configured for this subject's session year. Please set up quarters before using the gradebook." The page stays up and points you toward the right next step.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Fixed a 500 error when accessing the gradebook for a subject with no quarters configured
• The same guard was applied to the legacy grades view, closing an identical crash path
• Clarified the internal documentation for the "most recent quarter" logic to reflect that it can return empty when no quarters exist

The Payments page now guides you through Stripe setup.

If you visit the Payments dashboard before connecting your school to Stripe, you'll now see a clear banner explaining your next step. Previously the page just showed empty data with no hint about what to do.

• If Stripe isn't configured in your environment, a warning explains that payment collection isn't available
• If your school hasn't started Stripe onboarding, a "Set Up Stripe" button takes you directly to Payment Settings
• If onboarding is in progress, a "Continue Setup" button appears so you can pick up where you left off
• Once Stripe is fully connected, no banner appears and the dashboard works as usual

Creating assignments in the gradebook now always ends in success—not a server error.

If a teacher accidentally checked both the "Midterm" and "Final" boxes when adding a regular assignment, the page would crash with a server error instead of showing a helpful message. That's now fixed.

The assignment form now catches this combination before it ever reaches the server, so you'll see a clear validation message right away. We also repaired a longstanding issue where the mutual-exclusion guard in the browser was silently broken—it just wasn't wired up correctly. Both the form and the browser now agree: an assignment can be one or the other, but not both.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Fixed a 500 error when submitting the regular assignment form with both "Midterm" and "Final" checked simultaneously
• Activated the client-side mutual-exclusion guard for the Midterm and Final checkboxes (it was previously non-functional)
• Added server-side safety nets on all three assignment-creation paths in the gradebook so unexpected validation errors show a friendly message instead of crashing

Stripe Connect onboarding should no longer show a generic error.

If you clicked "Connect with Stripe" on the Payment Settings page and saw "Unable to start Stripe Connect onboarding. Please try again." with no further detail -- we've fixed that. The root cause was insufficient error handling that hid the actual problem (which could be anything from a misconfigured API key to a lost tenant context).

Now, if Stripe isn't properly configured, you'll see a specific message telling you to contact support. If the API call fails, the full error details are logged internally so we can diagnose the issue without asking you to reproduce it.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Added pre-flight validation that catches placeholder Stripe API keys before making API calls
• Improved error logging with Stripe error type, HTTP status, and error code for faster debugging
• Fixed a scenario where tenant context loss could silently swallow the real error

When you try to save a user with an email that's already taken, you now get a clear message — not a cryptic error.

If an administrator tried to update a user's or staff member's email address to one that already belonged to another account, NavEd would show a raw technical error message instead of something helpful. It said something like "Failed to Update User: duplicate key value violates unique constraint..." — which tells you nothing about what to actually do.

We've fixed this so that when you enter an email already in use, you'll see a clear message: "That email address is already in use by another account. Please choose a different email." The edit page stays open so you can correct it right away.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Fixed confusing error when editing a user or staff member with a duplicate email address
• Improved error handling for the staff edit flow with the same friendly message

Class names are back on the enrollment page.

If you've been trying to enroll students into subjects and noticed the class list looked... empty — you weren't imagining it. The checkboxes and "Enrolled" badges were showing up fine, but the actual subject names were invisible. Not a great experience when you're trying to assign 15 classes to a student.

We tracked this down and fixed it. Subject names now display correctly on both enrollment pages, in both light and dark mode. Thanks to the Compass team for flagging this one.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Fixed invisible subject names on the student enrollment page (/subjects/enroll/student)
• Fixed the same issue on the subject-first enrollment page (/subjects/enroll/)