Release Notes

Dark mode text on the student enrollment page is now readable.

If your school uses dark mode, the "Enroll Students in Subjects" page had several text elements that were nearly invisible -- the page subtitle, help text below dropdowns, the selection count badge, and the card header all blended into the dark background. This made the page unusable for anyone preferring dark mode.

All text on this page now uses theme-aware colors that adapt correctly to both light and dark modes. Light mode appearance is unchanged.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Card header text adapts to both light and dark backgrounds instead of being hardcoded white
• Help text below form fields is more visible in dark mode (opacity increased from 60% to 80%)
• Selection count badge uses outline style instead of ghost style for dark mode visibility
• Subject list container background is more distinguishable from the card body in dark mode

Your grades page now loads noticeably faster, especially if you're enrolled in multiple subjects.

We noticed that for students with several subjects, the grades page was doing a surprising amount of behind-the-scenes work on every load — quietly making a separate trip to the database for each subject to look up grade level information. For a student with eight subjects, that meant eight extra round-trips before the page could finish rendering.

We've consolidated those lookups into a single, efficient query so everything arrives together. The page loads the same as before, just faster — and the improvement scales as your school grows.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Grades page database queries reduced by up to 2× the number of enrolled subjects per student
• Subjects on the grades page now appear in consistent alphabetical order

A few pages that should have required a login now properly do.

We discovered that four pages — your profile, the directory settings, the add elective form, and subject documents — weren't correctly enforcing the login requirement. If someone navigated to these URLs without being signed in, they'd land on an error page instead of being redirected to login.

This is now fixed. Unauthenticated visitors are redirected to the sign-in page as expected, with a link back to where they were trying to go.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Profile page now redirects unauthenticated users to login instead of showing an error
• Directory settings, add elective form, and subject documents pages do the same

Student grade pages load noticeably faster when subjects use point-based grading.

If your school uses total-points grading — where final grades are calculated from raw points earned rather than percentages — you may have noticed that student grade pages could feel sluggish, especially for students enrolled in several subjects with many assignments. Each assignment grade was triggering its own separate lookup behind the scenes, and those added up.

We've eliminated that redundancy. The grade page now gathers all the information it needs in one efficient pass before the page renders, instead of making a separate trip to the database for each graded row. For a student with 14 graded assignments, that's 14 round trips reduced to zero.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Student profile grade tab loads faster for schools using point-based grading
• Fixed an issue where subject grade calculation could trigger extra database lookups per row during page render

Elective scheduling conflicts now tell you exactly what's wrong.

When assigning students to electives, if a student was already enrolled in another class during the same block, you'd see a generic "something went wrong" error — not helpful when you're trying to build a schedule quickly.

Now you'll see the actual conflict: which class, which block, and which day. You stay right where you were on the enrollment page so you can fix it and move on.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Elective block conflicts now show a clear warning message instead of a generic error page
• You're no longer redirected away from the enrollment page when a conflict occurs

NavEd stays reliable behind the scenes.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Added automated checks to ensure the background task worker stays connected to the database correctly across server restarts — prevents a rare class of silent connectivity errors from going undetected in future updates

SEO: Signup page now has a canonical tag.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Added <link rel="canonical"> tag to the signup page pointing to https://nav.education/signup/
• Consolidates 68 duplicate URL variants (from query parameters like UTM tags and referral codes) into a single canonical URL for search engines
• Prevents search engines from splitting page authority across duplicate URLs

Background tasks now recover more reliably on our servers — nothing changes for you.

NavEd runs background jobs that handle things like weekly digest emails and other scheduled work. In rare cases, these jobs would log a brief connection error when our server restarted or deployed, then immediately recover on their own. You'd never notice it, but our monitoring would flag it.

We've tuned how often the background worker checks for new jobs, which reduces unnecessary reconnection attempts and makes it more resilient during those brief infrastructure windows.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Reduced background worker connection churn against the database proxy
• Added configuration tests to keep this setting documented and regression-proof

Visiting certain pages while logged out now redirects you to login — instead of showing an error.

A handful of pages — including your profile, directory settings, subject documents, and the electives add form — were missing a small but important safeguard. If someone accessed those pages without being logged in (for example, after a session expired or by opening a saved link), they'd see a generic server error instead of being gently redirected to the login page.

This happened because of a code reorganization done a few months ago. When those pages were moved into their own files, the "require login" instruction didn't come along for the ride. We caught it through our production error monitoring and fixed all four pages at once.

If you've ever hit an unexpected error page on NavEd, this is the kind of issue we're constantly hunting down. Everything is working correctly now.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Profile page now redirects to login when accessed without a session
• Directory settings, subject documents, and electives add form have the same protection
• Fixed the existing test that was silently failing to catch this scenario

New: Blog post — Free Online Gradebook and Attendance

Content¶

• Published a new blog post at /blog/free-online-gradebook-and-attendance/ covering NavEd's free gradebook and free attendance tracker tools, how to link them together for roster sync, and when you might need the paid platform
• Targets the "free online gradebook and attendance" keyword where we're ranking at position 10.5

The Sessions page now loads noticeably faster for schools with large academic histories.

When a school accumulates many terms and quarters over the years, visiting the Sessions page was quietly making far more database trips than necessary — one for every quarter on record. A school with 24 quarters was making 24 separate requests just to display session names. It worked, but it was inefficient, and it would only get slower as schools added more history.

We've optimized the Sessions and Reports pages to fetch all the necessary data in a single, efficient request — no matter how many quarters your school has on record. The page renders faster, the server handles the load more gracefully, and you'll see the benefit most if your school has been with NavEd for a while.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• Sessions page: eliminated redundant database lookups for quarter term names
• Reports page: same optimization applied when loading quarter filter dropdowns
• Added automated test to catch similar slowdowns before they reach production

Fix: Assignment creation no longer crashes with a 500 error when a duplicate name is used.

Fixes¶

• Creating an assignment whose name already exists in the same subject and quarter now shows a validation error instead of a server error — teachers see the problem immediately rather than hitting a confusing crash page

Improved: Upgrade flow now takes you to the right place.

Previously, clicking "Upgrade Now" in the upgrade prompt modal sent you to the homepage, where there was nothing to do. The pricing shown in the modal was also outdated (Premium showed $8 instead of $5, Enterprise showed $12 instead of $8). And if a feature was blocked by your subscription tier, you were redirected back to where you came from with no path forward.

Now every upgrade touchpoint in the app leads to the Billing tab, where you can see your current plan, compare tiers, and manage your subscription. The pricing calculator page also shows a "Manage Billing" button for logged-in users instead of the generic "Start Free Trial" link. If you're on a plan without a payment method set up yet, you'll see upgrade/downgrade buttons on the plan comparison cards so you know what's available.

Fixes and Improvements¶

• "Upgrade Now" button in upgrade modal links to Billing tab instead of homepage
• Feature gating prices corrected: Premium $5/student, Enterprise $8/student
• Blocked feature redirects now go to Billing tab with actionable message
• Pricing calculator shows "Manage Billing" for authenticated users
• Plan comparison cards show upgrade/downgrade buttons even without active Stripe subscription