Online Grade Books Tell Parents What Happened in the Classroom

October 18, 2001

By LISA GUERNSEY




ROBERT WILKOFF likes to keep an eye on how his children are
doing in school. But last year he got almost more than he
bargained for. His daughter's teacher set up a Web site and
e-mail system to alert parents to everything that was going
on in class, including each homework assignment, a schedule
of tests and the latest rundown on the child's grades.

"You could go to the homework board and check to see
whether you were getting a truthful answer or not," said
Mr. Wilkoff, whose daughter Hannah is in eighth grade at
Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Md. "This is much more
dependable than hoping your kids bring something home in
their backpack."

Mr. Wilkoff is one of thousands of parents who now have a
direct channel into their children's classroom through
online grade books posted by teachers. With a password and
user ID, parents can log in at any time to check on their
children's grades, attendance, practice-test scores for
standardized exams and, in some cases, a comparison of
their children's grades with those of the rest of the
class. Some systems also have an e- mail setup in which
parents and teachers can communicate directly.

"It really does take out all the guesswork of being a
parent," said Catherine Johnson, whose son Dan is an eighth
grader at Nathan Hale Middle School in Northvale, N.J.
Dan's science teacher, Phil Lomonico, posts new homework
assignments weekly on the class home page that often are
hyperlinks to reading materials or online projects.

These online exchanges are not simply another outlet for
already deeply involved parents, although they certainly
are that. The technology is ushering in a new communication
protocol for the classroom. In the past students were
typically the messengers of their own fate, responsible for
divulging their grades and bringing home field-trip forms,
and parents saw the inside of a classroom perhaps once a
year.

Now many parents have the tools to be nearly omniscient.
Without entering the school they can peer into a teacher's
grade book or look at a homework assignment that might
otherwise have been simply scribbled on the classroom
chalkboard. Instead of waiting for an interim report to
arrive at the house, they can see a slip in grades almost
as soon as it starts - all without relying on their
children to tell them what is going on.

"The kids can't really fake it," said Vincent Krist, the
founder of Mygradebook.com (www.mygradebook.com), an online
tool that he says is used by more than 70,000 parents and
600,000 students. "Mom can get into e-mail at work, and
before you get home, she knows you didn't show up at
school."

For many parents and teachers, this is ideal. But Jamie
McKenzie, an educational consultant and former teacher,
worries that parents might use their newfound knowledge to
pester children who should be learning how to take care of
themselves.

"If we are constantly harassing them about how they did on
their assignments, we are actually reducing their growth,"
said Mr. McKenzie, who is the editor of From Now On, an
online educational technology journal. "We are
infantilizing them."

Brian Fox, an American history teacher at Suffern High
School in Suffern, N.Y., used a gradebook site called
ThinkWave (www.thinkwave .com) a year ago, and he said he
found that the grades could become points of unhealthy
fixation. "All the parent sees is one little blip, one
little bad grade, and the parent starts to panic," he said.


Children aren't the only ones under supervision. Hannah
Wilkoff said she thinks that all school districts should
have such a system so that parents can more easily keep
tabs on the teachers as well.

"If something happens in a class and you want to switch out
of it, your parents might be more open to your ideas," she
said.

Mr. Fox said that one reason he stopped using ThinkWave was
the barrage of e-mail he faced from inquisitive parents. "I
was getting a tremendous amount of e-mail saying: `Why
didn't you upload the grades?' `What is my password?' "

When online grading tools began to spring up about three
years ago, developers were more interested in helping
teachers than parents. ThinkWave started as Windows
software that enabled teachers to store grades, tabulate
weighted averages and produce reports. Today, the company
says, more than 300,000 people - teachers, parents and
students - have signed up to use it.

Mygradebook.com evolved from a program that Mr. Krist
created for his wife, Kristina, an eighth grade English
teacher. Ms. Krist had stored her gradebook on her laptop
and lost all her records when it was stolen.

After teachers began storing information on Web sites, they
began giving secure access to students and teachers, as
well. Parents rave about the program, said Ms. Krist, who
said that many other teachers in her school, Bell Junior
High in San Diego, were also using the product.

Ms. Krist remembers one spring day last year when she used
the Web site's e-mail program to show her students that
their parents were now in the loop. She had told her
students ahead of time that they would have a substitute
teacher, and even though an essay was due that day, "my
students thought they didn't have to do it," she said. The
substitute called Ms. Krist to inform her of the problem,
and she sent out an e-mail informing parents that their
children had tried to dodge a deadline.

"They got nailed the minute they got home," she said.

Ted
Feinberg, the assistant executive director of the National
Association of School Psychologists, said that online tools
can do a great deal of good if they are not abused.

"Parents need to stay involved with their children at all
ages," he said. "It's the manner with which you exercise
that involvement that is critical. If it is going to
perceived as Mom and Dad rifling through their drawers
looking for contraband, that is not going to be well
received."

He is not, however, a fan of sites that post information
comparing a child's progress with that of others in the
class. Some teachers say that parents want to verify
whether their children are telling the truth when they say
everyone else in their class also failed or got a C. But
Mr. Feinberg does not think the drawbacks are worth it. "I
think it breeds a competitiveness or fatalistic giving- up
with some kids," he said.

Many teachers acknowledge that the parents who respond
favorably to the online postings are often the same parents
who would be involved in their child's work if no Internet
existed. Other parents never log into the program, perhaps
because they do not have easy Internet access. Some never
respond to bulk or personal e-mail messages, even though
they gave teachers their addresses at the beginning of the
year.

In fact, Peter Petrossian, Hannah Wilkoff's teacher, said
that a few parents have asked to be taken off his class
mailing list. "It's kind of a shocker," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/technology/circuits/18HOME.html?ex=1004740
861&ei=1&en=1cbcb6c52b5c3d4e



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