Do Online Grades, Technology Give Parents Too Much Classroom Access?

CNN:

Teacher Terri Reh wants parents to monitor their children's entire educational career online.

"I post all my students' responsibilities, their current and upcoming assignments, and timelines for every project they have," says the teacher at Flagstaff Academy in Longmont, Colorado. "I also post messages detailing the status of homework, whether it's missing, late, or incomplete."

Read the whole story: CNN

Comments

[broui]

08:26 PM on 06/02/2011

I teach for a living.

This has been a mixed bag in my experience. It's a nice tool for parents that use it well. It's hard for a student to BS their folks about homework or their grades when the parent can access that info online at any time.

Conversely, the single biggest reason the college dropout rate is the highest it has ever been is that college students are lacking self-direction (per a Harvard study ongoing since 1995, repeated by dozens of universities nationwide). Good parenting is a balancing act. Parents who follow up with emails to me for the context of what they see online are the best ones because they tend to be the ones who end up giving their kids the right blend of support and elbow room.

[inmyhumbleopinion]

07:38 PM on 06/02/2011

Whatever happens, it's always the parent's fault, right? We're either too involved or not involved enough.

I think these tools are great and should be encouraged.

[GlennWatson]

07:09 PM on 06/02/2011

Reh invites parents to subscribe to her Twitter feed so they can follow her activities in and out of the classroom.>>

Good Lord a mighty. She thinks lot of herself.

[been2there]

05:05 PM on 06/02/2011

This really asks about the role of parents in education. The usual problem rears its ugly head--there is not a simple or single answer.
Both of my children have severe ADD, and I needed to ride them much more than an unaffected child. I also needed to shift responsiblity onto their shoulders, and to do that, I had to be able to monitor what was happening.
Had my children been less disabled, and ADD is a real disability, I would not have needed as much information from the teachers.
Overall, having the information available is a good thing. How parents use the information is out of the teacher's hands.

[cougarsrus]

03:11 PM on 06/02/2011

As a parent I have mixed feelings about infinite campus. On the one hand, it allows you to keep very close tabs on how your kid is doing and that's good, right? However, it inhibits a kid's ability to do what we all do, which is allocate our time over our tasks, letting some things go in favor of other things that we perceive as more important. A kid needs to learn to do that. With infinite campus, if a kid decides to skip and class or an assignment in order to put resources in another class/assignment instead, the parent can be immeidately all over it and second guess the choice. Ergo, the kid doesn't ever learn how to juggle the balls in the air by him or herself. Sometimes it's just TMI for the parent and it would be better for them to only be able see how everything comes out in the end for their kid.

[been2there]

05:06 PM on 06/02/2011

Parents can, and should, insist that kids do their schoolwork. They can, however, take the stance that so long as the work is being done on time and well, it is up to the kids to plan when.

[cougarsrus]

06:16 PM on 06/02/2011

Yes, my comments are obviously geared to the older, middle or high school, student and not a special needs student. Perhaps the bottom line is that these tools are good but that parents need to be ready to back off on their use as it becomes appropriate for their kids' ages and abilities. I think it is hard for many parents to do that.