When students enter high school, they most likely aren’t expecting a massive change from middle school. After all, it’s the same structure, just more difficult classes. Right? Not exactly. Once you enter high school, grades start to matter much more, and to keep track of them, your grades and classes are kept on a list called a high school transcript. You’ve probably heard of your transcript, but odds are, you don’t fully understand it or what it is. So let’s start with that.

What is a Transcript?

According to Phil Johnson, TEACH-NW Director and Principal, “a transcript is an official record of your high school academic journey. It lists everything you might need for graduation and beyond, including grades, classes you’ve taken, your GPA, your earned credits, and sometimes test scores." It’s the school’s formal list of everything you’ve done academically from your freshman year all the way to graduation." says Johnson.

Why Do Transcripts Carry So Much Weight?

You might think your GPA is the most important record of your high school career. After all, colleges only really care about your grades, right?

In reality, colleges want to know everything about your high school academics; from sports and electives, to how difficult your classes were. If someone has a 4.0 GPA, but only took "easy" high school classes and didn’t do many extra credits, they will likely be valued less by colleges than someone having taken all AP classes.

Transcripts aren’t just for college. “Transcripts may be required for some jobs or internships, particularly government positions," says Johnson.

The Issues With TEACH-NW Transcripts And Why They Happened

Because of the nature of TEACH-NW and how unusual the charter school’s model is, there have been issues with transcripts before. Namely, incorrect class names, mistakes with credits, and missing grades. “In 2018–19, TEACH-NW’s first year as a charter school, we contracted with PowerSchool to provide our Student Information System (SIS) and PowerTeacher gradebook support. Setting up a new SIS is a massive undertaking — even for large school districts with full data teams. Unlike traditional districts, TEACH-NW lacked a dedicated data team. Although some staff had prior experience using PowerSchool, we were not fully prepared to manage a complete SIS setup from day one.” says Johnson.

He continues to talk about the school’s initial creation process. “Initially, we focused on state-required functions, such as enrollment and attendance tracking. Over time, we expanded to managing graduation requirements and transcript reporting for high school students. Before that transition, we relied heavily on ILPs and on internally developed graduation-tracking sheets.” says Johnson.

Because TEACH-NW’s goal varies so much from the typical school’s structure, the founders were required to construct an SIS from scratch, with a much smaller team than more typical Oregon schools. With such limited resources, it was inevitable that things slipped through the cracks. 

However, when those issues surfaced, the school made sure to take action. Administrators made sure to discover the source of the mistakes, and created new regulations to make sure they didn’t repeat them.

How Has TEACH-NW Prevented These Issues From Reoccurring?

Since TEACH-NW discovered the issues and figured out the source of them, they have taken many steps to prevent them from happening again. They’ve instilled procedures like reviewing submissions multiple times and making sure everyone involved has access to it, to keep the system as error-free as possible. 

Unfortunately, even with as much optimization as TEACH-NW has added, there will always be some room for human error. Even with the staff working as hard as they have to keep things accurate, they still will make mistakes sometimes. To fix this, TNW Administrators have made sure that any issues or feedback from the parents or students will be heavily looked into to make sure everyone’s transcript is accurately representing their academic career.