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Web shines light on schoolwork

Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
by Kavita Kumar
October 15, 2002

Remember when you could stash those not-so-stellar algebra tests in the bottom of your locker and pray that your parents would never find out? When you could play hooky and intercept the school's call to your parents? Or when you could swear you had no homework (when, of course, you really did) and spend the night watching "must-see" TV?

Those days are becoming a thing of the past. Now many parents have been given the tools to fight back -- to the chagrin of some students.

With the click of a mouse, a username and password, parents in some metro-area school districts can access their children's grades, homework assignments, attendance records, disciplinary problems and even their lunch account balance.

Officials in districts such as Robbinsdale, Hopkins, Edina, Wayzata and Eden Prairie hope the Web sites will help parents get more involved and, by extension, bolster student achievement.

"It was really the cattle prod that he needed," said Robin Miller of her 15-year-old son Bobby, a 10th-grader at Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope, where an online system called ParentConnect began as a pilot program last year. This year it is being used in all of the district's junior and senior high schools.

Getting Bobby to turn in his assignments on time had been a constant challenge, Miller said. "My son is very bright, but lazy," she said. ParentConnect was just the tool she needs to monitor his assignments -- and to make sure they are getting done on time. Now any claims that he has no homework and thus should be allowed to play computer games fall on deaf ears.

Bobby wasn't happy when he learned of his mother's new tracking tool. The first words that came to his mind: "Uh-oh."

To him, "it was just one more conspiracy against kids," Miller deadpanned.

But once Miller began using the system, Bobby started getting more of his work done. She saw improvement. Now she browses the site only every other week or so to make sure he's on track in his classes.

"By the time you get the report card, it's too late," she said. "But now you can do damage control. And it's hard for your kid to argue against [the final grade], because here it is in black and white."

No more lame excuses about the teacher's grading techniques, she said, because parents can view all of the assignments and scores that led to the final grade.

Many of the online information systems in metro-area schools began as pilots last year. Using information from their successes, the systems are being enhanced and expanded this year.

The sort of information available on the Web sites varies by district. Most provide up-to-date attendance records, transcripts and course schedules. Some also include disciplinary actions and meal-plan balances, and include assignments and grades throughout a quarter.

In addition to improving student performance and communicating more timely information to parents, the online information systems also could help many financially strapped districts cut printing and paper expenses. In Eden Prairie schools, for example, where the district is going to voters for more tax money this fall and cut nearly $5 million for this school year, the district rolled out its EP Schools Portal this year as a budget-saving initiative.

"We won't be mailing out report cards this year," said Steve Simon, the district's director of operational technology. Paper will still be used for those parents who don't have Internet access, he said.

News parents can use

Parents say with such information just a click away, they don't have to wait until parent-teacher conferences or report cards to discover something amiss. Teachers vary in how frequently they update the online information, but most parents said the immediacy is getting better.

Also, they can check it at any time of day or night, a big plus for working parents. It also has cut down on phone calls to check on attendance or other questions, although more personal school-parent interactions certainly haven't been phased out. And no more relying on taciturn, forgetful teenagers for information.

"The communication [between students and parents] becomes less and less once you get to junior high," said Michael Burke, Edina's media and technology director. "Junior high students have a tendency to forget to bring things home -- to forget it in their locker. My son had a memory lapse as soon as he left school."

At Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, about 40 percent of parents are now registered to use the system, and the school is seeing results. More assignments are being turned in on time and fewer students are skipping class, Principal David Dahl said.

"We still have our hard-core chronic skippers, but I think it's made an improvement with our marginal skippers," he said.

More than once, a parent has checked the Web site during the day and discovered that a child skipped a class that very day. In some cases, they've called the school to reprimand their children.

"It's interesting to watch those conversations," Dahl said. "There are few words that need to be exchanged."

Wendy Paulson, a parent of a Hopkins High School senior, said she began using the online system after her daughter began driving to school and was sometimes late getting to early classes. For every time she was tardy, her Friday curfew was set one hour earlier.

Using the Web site "just made it easier" to track, Paulson said. Otherwise, she would have to get a printout of her attendance record. The Web site "shows you excused and unexcused absences as well as tardies. So if your child has managed somehow to write themselves a pass, you wouldn't know that otherwise. It's nice to know if your child has perfected your signature."

Stumbling blocks

The online information systems have not meant more work for most teachers and administrators, officials said. Teachers input the grades for quizzes and reports in their electronic gradebooks, which are translated onto the Web sites.

But not all teachers are sold on the idea of opening up their gradebooks for parents to see.

"It is a change in thinking for teachers," said Eden Prairie schools spokeswoman Judy Schell. Some teachers worry that parents won't understand the meaning or significance of certain scores, she said.

Eden Prairie schools currently give teachers the option of deciding how much information they put into the system, ranging from daily assignments to just end-of-quarter grades, Simon said.

"I predict in the next year, way more teachers will be using the gradebook online," he said. "When more and more teachers have success with it and not negative reactions from parents, the fear will go away . . . of parents complaining about grades."

But the new technology raises some troubling questions.

"Now it makes that digital divide even wider," said Pat Schmidt, principal of Hopkins North Junior High. "It's great for people who are online at home and for those parents with access to the Internet at work. But there's a big gulf."

The systems also will not help non-English-speaking parents.

"We don't intend for this to be the only means, just an additional means" for parents to get information, said David Brecht, who manages the online system in Hopkins.

For Miller's other son, Bobby's younger brother, who is a seventh-grader at Technology and Language Campus in Robbinsdale, it's been a smoother transition.

"The thing about being the younger kid, you often don't know any different," she said. "So it's just kind of a way of life now.

"It's not going to cramp his lifestyle as much as it has the other guy."

 
Kavita Kumar is at kkumar@startribune.com.

Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. Republished here with the permission of the Star Tribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the Star Tribune.