highschool websites that constantly email parents your grades

[chained to desk]

my school has this website that emails all the student's parents EVERY DAY with the student's grades, # of zeroes, etc. It's called "schooloop ", and it drives me insane because now there is NO ESCAPE from constantly being bothered about grades.
Hopefully it's just my school that does this...

[Ky]

My school has something like this, but my parents haven't checked it as much in recent times.

[SoulRiser]

Is it weird that I immediately read it as "schoolpoop"?

[Subb]

Once a week. Not grades, but how much time you spend on each class and what assignments are late.

[Desu]

what the fuck

[James Comey]

Sounds like shit. Great, now I'll get nagged every day about that shit!

[Gwedin]

#schooldoesntevenhaveouremailaddresses

We get a mid-year report to tell our parents that kind of stuff. Grades, attendance, etc... I read it for the lulz and that's about it.

[(´・ω・`)]

Mine did too, but (un)fortunately, the only parent who would care about stuff like that fries every time she goes near a computer...

[Trar]

My last school had an online system for students, teachers and parents to check grades, but we still got paper report cards 4 times a year. My parents at least didn't bother with the whole online grades thing.

[xcriteria]

I think some form of this "parents access gradebook" functionality is present in a lot of newer student information system software. Software makes tracking things and communicating much easier than it once was.

In many cases, rather than emailing, these systems let parents (and even students) log in and see their assignments and scores. The days of having report cards mailed only at the end of terms are probably coming to an end for most people, sooner or later.

All of this feedback could be useful, in cases where school wasn't being implemented as a factory-model "prison-like" scenario, where ill-fitting assignments and forced on disengaged students. In these cases, where parents accessing scores is likely to lead to punishment, rather than a discussion of "what's the point of this assignment," there's a problem for those of us who are school-incompatible for various reasons.

The answer in my mind is, let's have a real discussion about the purpose of school, along with developing better, more meaningful forms of assignments, measuring learning, and finding credibility. I think this is going to require looking outside of schools for a lot of that, which requires a change of perspective for parents and learners alike.

Vermont has taken a possibly large step toward transforming education form one-size-fits-all, to personalized, by passing a law that requires all schools to develop Personal Learning Plans with their students. This could turn out different ways, but the basic idea is that school should adapt to learner needs.

Educators Brainstorm Ways To Create Personal Learning Plans

The question, then, is what's the point of traditional grades, and what can replace them, in a world of individualized learning colliding against a world of standardized testing?

One approach to that is Shawn Cornally's software, BlueHarvest. Shawn was a math teacher, but he got fed up with various aspects of school, and set out to start a school that works in a different way, Big Ideas Group. This approach uses personalized projects, and focuses on helping people (1) learn, and (2) build a resume that will benefit them in life, unlike traditional grades. BIG is set up so students in Iowa can opt to use that approach instead of some of their traditionally-expected classes.

I think one step forward is for each person to learn about some of these ideas and innovations, and then try discussing them with parents and educators. Why can't learning work in a way that actually leads to joyful learning experiences, rather than a feeling of pain, punishment, and imprisonment?

(Also check out my related comment on RuleBreaker's thread Give me a zero and get over it!!!!.)

[craxyguy562]

My school uses schooloop too.

[Justin417]

Wow sometimes I don't realize how lucky I am that I control our home internet, every email, webiste, anything that goes through our network has to pass through MY firewall first

[Trekkie_Aspie]

I've done things like use one of my email address for the student's email and another of my email addresses for the parent's email.

[Missile]

My school has something similar, it's called "Parent Portal" you log in and you get to see your child's recent grades, the teacher tells you to give your parents the login info, but that paper is in a landfill now >

[TheCancer]

It's disgusting that every school district in America is exactly the same. It's like a giant Walmart of miseducation.

[Trar]

(02-01-2014 10:46 PM)TheCancer Wrote:  It's disgusting that every school district in America is exactly the same. It's like a giant Walmart of miseducation.

I didn't encounter this in elementary/middle school, but they probably had it in my district's high school. That, or they simply hadn't gotten around to implementing it yet. We had an online grade system that teachers, students and parents could log on to to check grades, but I don't recall any e-mails being involved and my parents at least (as far as I can recall) preferred the old-fashioned quarterly paper report card.

School districts probably need more autonomy in the first place.

[TheCancer]

Yeah. That's how it works. The parent just logs in and checks the grades. It would be easy enough to program it so parents could have an email alert every time a zero is plugged in or whatever. I don't even know all the features our system has. The rule from our side is we have to have at least four grades in before midterms and six by the end of the semester. We also have to provide a two week window before submitting final grades so students can do their missing assignments.

Good point about the autonomy.