Five Months Later, Students Still Mourn the Loss of PupilPath

PupilPath wasn’t much to look at, but it had broad, convenient functionality. Art: Faizah El-Gamasy

By ALAN TSANG

with contributions from Churaya Islam

PupilPath, the grade tracking and school messaging app NYC students used for years, suffered a major data breach in early January, 2022. On March 25, 2022, the New York City Department of Education released a statement that the personal information of around 820,000 current and former students – names, ethnicities, student ID numbers, and other sensitive details – had been compromised. Fortunately, social security numbers and family financial information were not included in the database. Still, students were understandably concerned.

“I felt shocked and appalled,” said Chowdhury Mahbub ‘25. “My personal data had been compromised and my information was no longer private.”

In response, the DOE ordered all schools to cease using PupilPath at the end of the 2021-2022 school year. At the beginning of July, students lost access to their accounts. Five months later, teachers and students are still mourning the loss. 

“The discontinuation of PupilPath was severely inconvenient,” said Kenneth Kuang ‘24. “It made checking grades and assignments a lot harder.” 

“I feel it was a necessary action taken by the DOE,” said Rico Zhang ‘25, but the limited functionality of the DOE’s replacement app GAMA “has completely made the action counterproductive and arbitrary. Without the accessibility of an application such as PupilPath, keeping track of grades is much harder.”

Though PupilPath wasn’t flashy, it was convenient and functional.

“The color-coded grades were good for me to easily see which class needed improvement,” said Eric Zhao ‘25. 

“PupilPath made connecting with students, parents, and counselors a lot easier,” said True Crimes teacher Ms. Laura Thurber. Finding teacher, student, and parent contact information was a breeze with PupilPath, and messaging was quick and simple. 

“I miss being able to see my past Regents exams,” said Mahbub. “It kept me on track and allowed me to set goals for my future.” Teachers were also able to see students’ past grades and test scores.

So far, Midwood is relying entirely on Google Classroom, which lacks most of this functionality. James Madison High School recently implemented Jupiter Ed, a PupilPath competitor.

“It took time to get used to Google Classroom but I think now I’m more used to it,” said Kuang. 

“I’ve been adjusting somewhat poorly,” said Mahbub. “I can't get as much information as I did with PupilPath, and as I stated before, it just feels like something is missing.”

Madison Due ‘24 said that with Google Classroom, “it’s hard to determine your accurate averages because the app doesn't weigh all your grades correctly.”

“Even though you can check your grades on Google Classroom, it's not organized as PupilPath,” said junior Syeda Muntaha.

“I’m adjusting, but I’d be much happier if there was an alternative for PupilPath for students and teachers,” said algebra teacher Mr. Jason Greenbaum.

With the start of the spring semester around the corner, perhaps additional features will be added to Google Classroom or GAMA, or Midwood could follow James Madison’s lead with Jupiter Ed. But for now, teachers and students will just have to make do, while remembering that schools once survived for hundreds of years with only handwritten teacher grade books.