Education Law

Tracking class grades in real time

Coming right off last week's NSBA T+L Conference in Seattle, BoardBuzz liked this article in the Washington Post about how some schools in the Washington, D.C. area are keeping teachers, students, and parents all plugged in to Web-based programs that allow them to follow how kids are doing in school, down to the individual assignment.

The proliferation of online grading systems has transformed relations among teachers, parents and students and changed the rhythm of the school year. Internet-based programs including SchoolMAX and Edulink are pushing midterm progress reports into obsolescence. Prospective failure is no longer a bombshell dropped in a parent-teacher conference. A bad grade on a test can't be concealed by discarding the evidence. A student can log on at school, or a parent at work, to see the immediate impact of a missed assignment on the cumulative grade or to calculate what score on the next quiz might raise an 89.5 to a 90. Report cards hold little surprise.

Consider this partly another outgrowth of No Child Left Behind's focus on academic progress and data-driven decision-making. Sure, there may be some downsides. The article cites the "controlling tendencies of the helicopter parent" and the need to be vigilant about security and privacy, for example. But at a time when timely data on where things stand academically are more important than ever, technology offers some opportunities.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).