The Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) announced a change to its grading platform, moving from the widely-used Aeries Software system to the eKadence Learning Foundation, the current assignment tool that the teachers use. This transition officially started with the opening of the 2024-2025 school year and will be applied district-wide.
Since 2020, AUHSD educators and students have maneuvered both Aeries, the gradebook, and eKadence, the platform for classroom tasks and communication. This dual-platform approach led to discrepancies in grades and increased workloads for teachers.
“[eKadence] is a way more interactive instructional tool that will provide enhanced benefits to staff members, teachers and our students,” Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Dr. Jaron Fried said, “It’s giving our District and staff a way to assess how our students are progressing with their 5Cs while at the same time giving students experience in navigating through a Learning Management Platform.”
The eKadence platform is a Learning Management System (LMS), a software application for the creation, delivery, and reporting of learning courses and programs. By contrast, Aeries is a Student Information System (SIS), which includes admissions, enrollment, and other functionalities. While eKadence will be mainly used for grading, Aeries is still needed for official transcripts.
“It’s a learning curve to get everything correctly for teachers to enter everything and get the settings right and to get the people from eKadence to get their program right,” Ms. Somers, Oxford health teacher and technical coach, said, “You always have to double check the system and make sure that things are entered correctly.”
History teacher Mr. Banderas also suggested that additional trained staff could be helpful during the transition.
“Aeries isn’t perfect, but it was working well enough so that we didn’t need to add something else to it. If we were to replace it entirely, I think that would’ve been something that made more sense,” Banderas said, “I think moving forward, additional trained staff could be helpful.”
For AUHSD parents, clearer communication is important.
“We [parents] get about 2-3 communications every day from either the school or AUHSD, so I would imagine the parents are missing some of these communications,” Spanish teacher and AUHSD parent Mrs. Stephan said.
In an Oxford survey of 121 students, 85.3% of the respondents said that having all grades in one place will make it easier for them to keep track of progress, while 14.7% said otherwise.
“I dislike it. I’d much prefer that we have a dedicated site for grades (Aeries) and one for assignments (eKadence),” senior Veronica Shao said.
AUHSD is working with teachers and staff to ensure a smooth transition.
“I recognize there’s a learning curve, yet despite that, I am really proud of our teachers and staff. At the end of the day, this transition to eKadence will ultimately make the learning experience better for our students and families. It’s also going to better support our teachers to do their job more effectively and efficiently,” Fried said.
