<p>As a teen, I support doing it. Most parents live in total denial of their kid's grades. Most anal parents already know all their kid's grades anyway</p>
<p>Our school system also has this for several years, but the novelty wore off quickly for me. My kids have always been very open about their grades, (the good - the bad - and the ugly), so I've never really felt the need to monitor them online. However, if I had a child who was struggling and kept his grades to himself, I would find this tool invaluable.</p>
<p>Well, I would have been okay if parents were moderate enough about this. This makes parents feel like they are getting what they paid for (just like buying a service etc... parents are also customers). Now that I'm in college, my parents asked me more than 10 times about whether I would graduate with cum laude (the fact is, no)... I'd tell them "well... maybe." I think I'd be fine with my current grades and stuff on my record when I apply for schools or jobs. In my case I'd rather not have them see everything because they'd be calculating my grades every single day and tell me what I have to do to get the cum laude, which is insane. </p>
<p>Sometimes we need to go off-hook and we do think that we really would be okay. First semester freshman year, one of my friends got a bad physics score once on a midterm. She was a premed and her parents were doctors. Her parents saw everything. They consulted with some other doctors who convinced them to force her to quit everything else. They made quit the singing club she tried so hard to get in. She cried for like a week but she did obey her parents. She was one of the 15xx SAT-scorers when SAT was 1600 out of 1600.</p>
<p>It's bad if parents expect perfection out of us... way too much perfection.
I have another friend who got scolded as because she got a 3.94 (not a 4.00) in college. She became a really mean person she fought with her close friend (which was also her classmate) because that friend of hers got an A in the class that she didn't.</p>
<p>Our schools have something like this but it's not as detailed. It really helped my D during HS...she was able to raise a couple of grades by showing work she had turned in that was marked as missing. That was a plus. Unfortunately not all the teachers are prompt about updating, some don't use the system at all, and often I would get bent out of shape over a failing grade or something when the truth was that the teacher entered a 0 as a placeholder or had only graded part of an assignment. Look at your own risk! I haven't used it at all for my S who is a soph, although he checks up on himself from time to time just out of curiosity.</p>
<p>My school is getting that next year. I'm graduating though, so I dodged that bullet. Despite the fact that I've had straight A's with a couple B+'s through high school, I'm really glad that they didn't have that during my time there.</p>
<p>My school also implemented something like this this past year. It has the capacity to show attendence, but we don't use it for that. I like the fact that I can check my grades anytime, anyplace, especially from home--especially the fact that I can find out about my final exam scores over winter break or during the summer, instead of spending a bunch of time and energy tracking the teacher down during busy exam week. There definitely are some issues with it--teachers who persit in entering uncurved tests, so your grade looks terrible for awhile, teachers who rarely update, and teachers who enter zeros in for homework that you were absent for and can still turn in (I hate that!). </p>
<p>I definitely see the potential for parental browbeating, but I do have to second (third, whatever) the theory that the TRULY helicopter parents (the ones freaking out that their kid is momentarily getting a B+ in AP Whatever) will always find some way to micromanage their children. Personally, my parents have no clue what the password is--they haven't asked, I haven't offered, and we're all happy :). Of course, they are pretty clueless about such things...my little brother set the parental password on our PlayStation 2 and he and I are the only ones who know it! But we're good kids...they don't need to worry about us that way.</p>
<p>The system is kind of flawed.
They have it in my school but everybody signed up as their parents and use it as a fast way to check their grades.</p>
<p>lynxie
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Personally, I'd love to be able to click the grade and pull up a digitized scanned image of the assignment with teacher markup and maybe even his/her assessment of what went wrong (or hopefully right!). </p>
<p>This kid isn't 8 years old, but twice that, or something similar. Personally, if anyone were snooping on me to that degree I would be furious.
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<p>I'm sorry if you feel that a parent being interested in your understanding of the subject matter is snooping. The parents who only care about the letter on the report card don't get what education is about and measure their kids by the score.</p>
<p>I want my children to understand the concepts being taught. The grades will follow naturally. The letter grades do not tell me what is not understood or whether it is just random errors.</p>
<p>I expect my children to make mistakes. If they don't make mistakes, they probably aren't being challenged sufficiently and are getting inflated heads. I want to know if they make the SAME mistake repeatedly. That means a concept that is not understood sufficiently or a lack of focus. Given the typically large size of most high school classes with teachers having to deal with 150-180 kids during a day, I don't expect them to recognize these patterns emerging. By the time it really show up in the grade, often the child has become quite a bit behind in understanding the concepts built upon the concept that was missed. </p>
<p>This is the case with my son. We get regular updates on his grades, but since we rarely get to see the actual work (the work never makes it home), we have no idea why he struggles and as a result can only ask him about the letters we see. Hardly an opportunity to be supportive. Heck, if we praise him for an "A", we don't know whether it was a difficult assignment or not.</p>
<p>On the other hand, at my daughter's boarding school, we don't get to see the grades at all until marking periods. However, with extremely small classes (9-11 kids), there is no hididng when you don't understand a concept, and the teachers do follow up very well. All we ask is that she takes advantage of any help offered and ask for more whenever she has any doubts.</p>
<p>And for a parent who would like to see my son's work marked up, I am completely comfortable without seeing anything until marking period in my daughter's situation. It is all about the confidence you have in your support system at school.</p>
<p>My kids have it at their school. It's useful for parents of ADD kids like mine, who tend to forget things or have lapses in focus. I only mention it to them if I see them getting off track in an easy course, and to congratulate them on good grades.</p>
<p>The one exception: S's 1Q senior year grades were not up to par, and he was up for a big merit scholarship. He was slacking off on HW in a couple courses. I told him I was going to be merciless 2Q about making sure he brought his grades up, since this would affect both of our futures and finances. I kept track of his grades and they improved a lot. I think this helped him get the scholarship he was after, so I don't regret it. I know he hated it tho!</p>
<p>One point: my S gave me a nice compliment recently that he was glad I was never one of those parents who "hover constantly" (his words), and that I let him try things on his own and make his own way. So I guess that means I am not officially a helicopter parent, despite bugging him about 2Q senior grades.</p>
<p>My school has something like this. One can even click on the grades to look at every assignment and its respective grade. The system at my school is meant for the parents, but students use it as well (to check their own stuff and see what they're receiving or missing). I share this system with my parents, so I find it very informative.</p>
<p>Giving students (not parents) the option to review their data online makes sense. If the parents wish to then ask their children for updates, fine. Beyond that, let the parents go through a much slower FERPA procedure as needed.</p>
<p>Making the data, which is even more than what FERPA requires, available to parents 24/7 online is a serious mistake.</p>
<p>Its helpful for both to have access. Students so the involved ones don't bug their teachers every day for their grade, parents so they can hopefully push the less involved students to care more about school.</p>
<p>Remember it's not an all or nothing system. You can "opt out" and not get a password or you can get a password and never get on line to take a peek. As we've heard many students like it for all the reasons that have been explained. If you feel it's not right to keep an eye on your kids, then don't use the tool for that purpose.</p>
<p>
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Remember it's not an all or nothing system.
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</p>
<p>It is an absolute system. There are no degrees of permission allowed to the parents. They all are entitled to 100 percent of the online information. What use the parents make of the entitlement is entirely up to them, not the students (not to mention teachers) who will bear most of the cost of this arrangement. </p>
<p>That some parents will "opt out" for as long as that suits them, does not change the fact that many will "opt in" who should never have had the option to do so. Children of opt-out parents will operate in the knowledge that their parent can opt in at any time. Other students will not know whether or not their parents have opted in or out.</p>
<p>siserune, that may be true for some systems, but it's not true for mine--my parents are not automatically given the id and password to log on. Now, perhaps if they called the school or something, they could get it, but I'm not sure--as I already said, they're not interested. </p>
<p>However, it might be becoming an absolute system next year--the school will no longer be mailing out paper report cards and grades will only come out online. It doesn't apply to me, of course, so I'm not too clear on the details, but I'll be interested to see how that works out for my little brother, who will be a freshmen next year. That system does seem to encourage, if not helicoptering, then at least a lot more parental oversight, which I suppose is arguably a good thing. To me, though, I know I would find it overbearing if my parents were checking up on my grades constantly, and you do raise a good point that there could be some tension involved from simply knowing that your parents could be checking up on you at any time. Again, I'm sure some would claim that that is a good thing, but in general I think it is better to have parents who are weaning themsleves from their children's business in high school, being that more than likely their students will be leaving the nest very shortly. Not to say that parents shouldn't still be involved, but the temptation for overinvolvement seems very great, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I understand parents want to check their child's progress, but isn't the report card at the end of every term enough? What about the mid-term progress reports detailing attendance, assignments, grades, etc.? Where will this end?</p>
<p>It's just going to fuel the fire for those INSANE parents who already put tremendous pressure on their children to reach academic perfection. </p>
<p>Those same parents who push their children to be doctors and lawyers at age 2, and who, for their child's 3rd birthday, bought them Harvard sweatshirts two sizes too big so they could wear them until they turn 8, and reserve Kaplan SAT prep courses before they even learn how to read. </p>
<p>When these students get to college, almost no information is disclosed to parents unless the child chooses to show them. What are these parents going to do then: stalk their child's professors and place endless phone calls requesting to see some numerical proof that their child is living up to their parents lofty expectations? Somewhere, a line needs to be drawn.</p>
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my parents are not automatically given the id and password to log on.
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<p>Apparently they automatically have the right to be given it, and have been informed of that right. It is not conditional on student or teacher approval or limited in any way.</p>
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Now, perhaps if they called the school or something, they could get it, but I'm not sure--as I already said, they're not interested.
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<p>They're not currently interested. Knowing that this factor is subject to change would, one assumes, influence childrens' behavior, or the calculations leading to some of that behavior. This is so whether or not it is specifically true in your family.</p>
<p>That's another interesting point, rriello5: will this system leave parents even less prepared for their lack of control during the college years? My parents fortunately took a "you're on your own now" approach, but several of my friends had parents who still tried to exert control in different ways; witholding finances if the child didn't live where they wanted, join or not join clubs in accordance with the parents' wishes, one was even forced to sign a contract stating that he would cease to be a homosexual, because his parents would not support him otherwise. Will it be harder for parents to go from this total access to zero access at college, and will more parents try to exert some amount of control over their children in college as a result? I'm not saying they necessarily will, but it's an interesting question to me.</p>
<p>I would hazard a guess that the kind of parents that are extreme are in the minority, not the majority. And what are you kids afraid of, that we'll see when you skip class, that we'll see when you haven't turned in 3 homeworks assignments in a row? That we'll harp on you abit to finish assigned tasks and show up for class? Even the very best kids pull stuff like this. I'm by no means a helicopter parent, but I figure I've got until about age 18 to instill values in my kids that will spill over into how they perform in a work environment and in life and maybe a tiny, tiny bit of ablility to influence once they leave the home for college and after. There is a huge difference between parenting and helicopter parenting and it all has to do with the words "influencing", "raising", and "parenting". Most kids, mine included, make good decisions, but most kids also do silly things. I've seen both extremes of parents: the kind of parents who say "oh well" I can't control him/her anymore and the kind that are doing pyschological damage. The middle ground is where the majority are and if it "bothers" the juveniles, well so what. If you have a S or D that always turns in their homework, never skips class than most likely you'd never feel the need to check in. Those kids are in the minority just like the helicopter parents and the "oh well" parents. Most kids still really need their parents through the high school years. Most schools don't have the time to call you if darling junior skips French IV to go play or didn't turn in 3 homework assignments for Calc that are turning the A to a B. In my mind there is really no moral dilema here at all.</p>
<p>If parents are responsible for their children (and they are, legally, until the child turns 18 or has been declared emancipated), then they should certainly be able to access all the information online. </p>
<p>Many times schools and their staffs need to know that there are (adult) eyes keeping track of what goes on in their hallowed hallways and classrooms.</p>