A path from paper assessments to the gradebook, without entering grades twice

I led the design of Digital Assessment Administration, CPM’s path from an assessment to a score, and made the case that changed its scope: no teacher will enter grades twice to use a digital platform, so sending grades to the school’s gradebook had to be in the first version.

Design leadership0 to 1 designLTI integration

Role: Lead Product Designer, functioning as Head of Design
Company: CPM Educational Program, 2026
Scope: Assessment administration, the Teacher’s Desk gradebook, and grade passback
Built with: Figma, Figma Make, Confluence, Jira

The problem: Teachers had no digital path from assessment to score. They graded on paper and entered scores again in a separate district system.
The turning point: No teacher will enter grades twice, so sending grades to the school’s gradebook had to be in the first version.
Where it stands: In development.

Teachers had no digital path from assessment to score, and districts were asking for one

Assessment administration was entirely on paper: print, distribute, collect, hand-grade, then enter the scores in a separate district system. CPM captured no assessment data and had no record of who was assessed and when.

Digital administration was a hard requirement in 7 of the 20 RFPs CPM reviewed, and leadership ranked it first of twelve priorities, so it was a business problem as well as a classroom one. Early drafts came from a designer on my team. I took over once stakeholders moved past discussing it conceptually, and led it end to end with product and engineering.

The original plan had no gradebook connection, so I made the case for one

Drawing on my experience as a former teacher and on how teachers behave, I explained to product and development that no teacher will do double entry just to use our platform. The platform had to earn the data by making it easy to send grades on.

We want the data because it lets us build individual, specialized instruction paths from the grades teachers enter. Product’s research on teacher sentiment pointed the same way, and the plan changed: passback through LTI Advantage became part of the first version.

Paper stays in the classroom, and teachers get the tooling

The first release is built for the teacher, not the student. Teachers give assessments on paper as they do today, then enter scores in an online gradebook that autosaves, lets them mark students absent or exempt, shows a class average, and updates the school’s gradebook in one click.

Teacher's Desk gradebook for Period 1, Math 6: Overview, Grades and Assignments tabs, a student search, an Assign assessment button, keyboard shortcut hints, a legend for Exempt, Absent and Late, and a table of students with an overall percentage and scores for six assessments, a class average row, and a Submit grades to LMS button at top right. — **New.** The Teacher’s Desk gradebook: scores entered per student, absent and exempt status, a class average, and a single action to submit grades to the LMS.

I designed to a constraint: all scoring stays with the teacher

CPM’s position is that assessments are not machine-graded. I aligned product, engineering and grading-policy stakeholders on passback and proficiency-based grading, then built the rubric to fit that position. The teacher scores with the rubric, and the result flows into the gradebook with no second entry. It is designed to carry student digital submissions to quick grading the same way.

Where it stands

In development. The Assessment Builder it builds on, where teachers make their own printable assessments instead of using only CPM’s, is live and slated for a redesign to match the modern update I designed. The connection that sends grades to the school’s gradebook is still being wired up.

If I did it again, I would read the documentation end to end first

The Assessment Builder was nearly built by the time I was brought in to connect it to everything. I helped with its functional requirements, but I lacked the early context the developers had, which made my decisions on Teacher’s Desk, grade passback and the gradebook harder.

Before designing anything that depends on a system that is already built, I would read its documentation end to end and walk through it with the people who built it.