Chesapeake teachers' grade books to go online this spring

By Amy Coutee
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 14, 2008

CHESAPEAKE

This spring, hundreds of Chesapeake parents will be able to find out if their children skipped a class or aced an exam without waiting for the youngsters to tell them.

Hickory Middle School and Oscar Smith High School parents will be the first to test an Internet program that lets families see teachers’ grade books online. Among the things parents will see are absences, test scores, homework assignments, schedules and notes from teachers.

Suffolk and Norfolk have similar programs that give parents online access to students’ grades. Virginia Beach will offer a program called SchoolNet for parents starting in 2009 .

The goal is to help parents monitor student progress and improve communication between teachers and parents, school officials said. Only the teacher can change the data in the system.

The Chesapeake program is free for families, but it cost the school division about $138,000 . Officials do not know how many students’ homes have Internet access, but said teachers can print out any of the information parents need. They would not say how parents will be notified about the program, and the division has not decided when the program will be rolled out division-wide.

Amy Couteé, (757) 222-5216, amy.coutee@pilotonline.com

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Could be a problem.......

Submitted by got2win1 on Fri, 02/15/2008 at 5:43 pm.

What if a teacher makes an honest mistake and accidentally enters a test grade as a 60 rather than a 90 which is the real score, for instance? If this type of scenario occurs on a Friday and the teacher is not available for the parent to contact, the teacher's error could really mess up a child's weekend plans! An abusive parent might go so far as to inflict wrongful physical punishment upon the child. By the time the error gets corrected, it could be too late. All students should be given the opportunity to verify the accuracy of their grades before the parent sees the grades in order to prevent such scenarios from happening. Teachers should have the opportunity to make the necessary adjustments too. Otherwise, the parent will blame the teacher for the punishment that parent inflicted upon the child. In the end, this will damage the teacher/student relationship which will undermine the teaching/learning process.