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Anne Arundel school leaders report progress and remaining fixes in Canvas rollout
Summary
Superintendent and staff told the Board of Education that Canvas is now the district'wide container for curriculum, assessments and grade reporting, with thousands of migrated courses and growing family engagement; staff acknowledged outstanding grading integration work and said targeted supports for special education have just been added.
The Anne Arundel County Board of Education met in workshop to receive an update on the district'wide rollout of the Canvas learning management system and to ask staff about parent engagement, teacher training and outstanding technical issues.
Superintendent (presenter) said the district adopted Canvas to serve as a single "container" for curriculum, assessments, grade reporting and resources, and to align the system with the district's strategic priorities. "We wanted this to be the one'stop shop for all things teaching and learning," the superintendent said, describing the rationale for moving the gradebook into Canvas.
Board members heard that the district launched Canvas after procuring it in late 2024, with early adopters testing features in late 2024 and a broader roll out in August and September of the current school year. Staff said the migration created 1,075 central "blueprint" courses that, when adapted to scheduled sections, produced roughly 57,177 active course sections and tens of thousands of course materials now housed in Canvas.
District staff also described resources intended to support families: CPS Connect single'sign'on, a public help site with written materials and multilingual videos, and school'level family nights. "Parents can click into a course, see assignments and teacher feedback, and use the gradebook to follow a student'to'do list," the superintendent said. Staff reported 11,000'15,000 parents have engaged with Canvas in the parent/observer role since launch, and said the district wants to increase that rate.
Teachers received a mix of asynchronous and synchronous professional learning. Staff said the district trained staff through a Canvas course and by deploying 148 Innovative Learning Advisors across schools to provide school'level support and open office hours.
Officials acknowledged a remaining technical problem with grading and integrations. "Teachers had to sink grades back to another system," the superintendent said, calling it a "sore spot for teachers." Staff said they are close to a solution but that full integration between Canvas, PowerSchool (the student information system), and district analytics is not yet complete.
On special education, staff said a new case'manager user role was developed with the vendor to let case managers see only the students they manage, their courses and grades; that feature rolled out to the district two weeks before the workshop. Staff also described accessibility tools and curriculum tagging that allow teachers to assign differentiated content for students with IEPs or 504 plans.
Board members and parents praised the implementation while pressing for clearer usage goals for families, mobile responsiveness and faster fixes on the gradebook'integration work. Staff said they will continue outreach, add targeted professional learning and move toward the full analytics integration next year.
The board did not take formal action at the workshop; staff will continue implementation work and return with updates.
