Grades Going Online
Parents and Teachers in Cyberspace
By Daniel Muniz

After numerous pilot programs across the country, online access for parents to view their children’s grades and schoolwork are becoming widespread and commonplace in many school districts. Grades, assignments, absences, and notes from teachers can now be at the fingertips of some parents.

For those who want to be involved in their children’s academic life, the Internet is truly revolutionizing parenthood. In the past, even good responsible parents had a tough time wringing out important information from their kids especially when it involved grades and disciplinary problems.

As a parenting tool, the usefulness of real time online access is almost priceless.

Let’s face it; some kids, even the good ones, require more intervention and supervision than others. And these kids may also be very adept at stealthily concealing nefarious activity. Instead of catching the warning signs early on when they are easy to fix, some parents are completely unaware of problems until they get out of hand. And sadly, when things are out of control, it may already be too late for anyone to exert enough “parental influence” to reverse such a trend.

And that is where I think that such online access by parents is crucial.

It is much easier to fix a potentially serious problem like a “skipped class” the first or second time it happens as opposed to it becoming habitual along with a child developing an ingrained attitude problem. The same goes with bad grades, missed assignments, and anything else that can be caught at the very beginning.

Again, it is so much easier to address the problem of a one zero or a low grade here and now. The corrective action can be swift and decisive so that it can be enough to prevent the situation from getting worse as opposed to finding out when your child has already failed the semester.

And even when such problems cannot be fixed at the very beginning, online access doesn’t leave concerned and worried parents in the dark. They can immediately know when their children have skipped class or have not shown up at all as well as any current disciplinary problems. And email also allows feedback both ways with a teacher which is vital when dealing with potentially serious problems.
 

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Prior to utilizing cyberspace, the cold reality is that letters mailed to parents or sent by their children can easily end up getting lost or misplaced or even worse, altered and falsified. The Internet takes all those problems away by allowing parents access to view the status and progress of their children in real time.

It also gives the harried and overburdened parents or single parent, a time saving tool. Some parents are just saddled by so many time constraints that such technology allows them to become better involved in their children’s lives.

Naturally, there are some drawbacks.

Some parents love to nag and they will endlessly hassle a teacher about anything they deem as negative or unfair especially when given the ease of email. But such nagging is true with just about any classroom of students although online access can make this problem more prevalent.

On the educator end, some teachers just don’t want to embrace new technology and that is natural for almost any kind of industry. Schools just have to do a better job in training teachers with new software.

Other teachers just don’t like sharing information such as grades. That is downright wrong although it may not necessarily be the teacher’s fault. Spineless administrators often place blame on teachers for academic and disciplinarian problems that they have absolutely no control over. Getting “too involved” may end up placing a huge undue burden on such educators especially when they have classrooms of students to teach.

Another pressing problem is that not everybody has access to the Internet. A school district must then come up with creative ideas to solve this dilemma such as instructing parents how to use their service from a public Library. Schools can also set up computer kiosks in their campuses so that parents can drop by once a week or so just to check up on their child and write emails to teachers.

Finally, the most obvious drawback is this. A parent who doesn’t give a flying flip about the academic or disciplinary status of their own children, such technology is utterly useless. Some parents don’t care while others may be too naïve to have an active interest. In all reality, nothing can be done to solve that problem. Online access is a great tool but it does absolutely nothing for people who refuse to take parenthood seriously.

And there are also some parents who choose not to utilize such tools simply because they feel that they don’t need them. That’s fine and there is nothing wrong with that and our education system must respect them because such people are not in the same category as the ones that do not care. However, perhaps every parent ought to be able to “trust but verify” the status of their children. Perhaps not to the level of the parents who want to be deeply involved in this manner, but it can still be a useful tool from time to time to keep your kids honest.

Overall, for everyone else, the benefits to such real time information are enormous. More schools need to provide this service and more parents need to take advantage of them.

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