We are an all boys high school (1250+ students). We been posting grading
information online for about 3 years now. We are on a quarter/semester
system and we post PDFs of report cards at the end of each quarter to secure
portals for students and parents. During the quarter, faculty are required
to post 2 "mid-quarter" reports to the secure portal. Some teachers do the
minimum while others post updates on a weekly basis.
Initially, our students were a bit bothered by the fact that their parents
could see such up-to-date information even before the boys got home from
school, but that didn't last very long and mostly the students aren't
bothered by how up-to-date their parents are. Mostly the students like the
constant updates and after the first few months three years ago, we haven't
received any complaints from students.
We did go through the "helicopter parent" stage when we first started, but
in hindsight we blame ourselves for that. We did not do enough
communicating with parents before we started posting information online to
emphasize that the parents' first conversation about grades should be with
their son and only after that should they call a teacher. (When we first
started there were cases of teachers receiving emails and phone calls from
parents within 15 minutes of having posted an update online. We no longer
experience this.) We now do a better job of educating parents at the start
of each school year and we now have few to no helicopter parents acting out.
Answers to your itemized questions.
1. We do NOT post individual assignment grades, just up-to-date summaries.
These summaries must be posted at least twice during each quarter (posting
dates are on our school calendar).
2. We post for grades 9 - 12.
3. The students like it. Mostly the students like that everything is
online and they can pull up their assignments and grades from school and
home equally as easily.
4. Based on annual surveys of our parents, it has only improved
communication between parents, students, and faculty.
5. There have been some philosophical discussions, but after 3 years of
doing this, most of that has died down. Our faculty now have other concerns
that are raising other philosophical questions. Overall, no one
fundamentally disagreed with the sharing of information.
This spring, we completed our migration to being almost completely paper
free in our communications with parents. The last letter that our families
receive is their acceptance letter. That letter contains username/password
information to log in to their accepted student portal and from that point
on, all communication is electronic. The overwhelming majority of our
parents approve of this change.
Christopher
Christopher Butler
Director of Information Services
St. John's Preparatory School
http://www.stjohnsprep.org
On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Kris Schulte <kschulte@stuartschool.org>wrote:
> Do any of your schools post your students grades on line? If so, I was
> wondering if you could give me some info about the following:
>
> 1. Do you post every grade (for each test, quiz, etc) or just cumulative
> grades at certain points in the term (i.e. mid term or end of term)?
> 2. What grade levels do you do post (i.e grades 9-12, K-12, etc)?
> 3. What has been the impact on your students?
> 4. What has been the impact on how the parents relate to their kids with
> all this information?
> 5. How has it impacted parent-school and parent-teacher relationships and
> communication?
> 6. What philosophical issues has this raised and how have you dealt with
> these? (I am thinking about the issue of helicopter parents, fostering
> student independence, changing the balance between grades and learning,
> impact on motivation, and many others)
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> Kris Schulte
> Dean of Faculty
> Stuart Country Day School
> 1200 Stuart Road, Princeton, NJ 08540
> 609-921-2330
> fax 609-497-0784
> kschulte@stuartschool.org
>
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