School Web Sites Helping Parents Stay in the Loop-Grades, Homework Tracked Online

Mary Willett doesn’t have to wait for a call or a note from her son’s teacher — or even for his report card — to know how he’s doing at Gaithersburg High School.

By Christina A. Samuels
Washington Post Staff Writer

Over a pre-dawn cup of coffee, before she leaves for the gym and the office, Willett can sit at her computer, bring up a Web site called eClass and key in a private password that lets her see James’s grades on his homework and tests.

Like checking a bank balance or paying a light bill, keeping tabs on their children’s performance is something parents in many school districts can do online. That is how Willett learned why her son, a 15-year-old sophomore, was getting middling grades in biology despite acing most of the tests: He wasn’t turning in all his homework assignments.

Willett said that intelligence was the "springboard" that got her past the typical conversation with James — "How was your day?" "Fine" — to the heart of the matter.

"If I’m equipped with additional information," she said, "I can directly ask about the homework or class work assignment and not have a surprise sprung on me."

Online access to grades, homework assignments and attendance records has created a new connection among parents, teachers and students.

"I come from the camp that calls it just short of a revolution," said Don Blake, who tracks educational technology for the National Education Association. "It has increased parental involvement, and I think teachers would say that if there’s one thing that could turn around public education, it’s . . . parental involvement."

But even the most ardent supporters say the Web sites — like report cards, notes and phone calls — are only as effective as teachers and parents make them. When it comes to engaging students in their work, they are just another tool.

"The use of technology alone is not a ‘family involvement program,’ " said Steven Constantino, principal of Prince William County’s Stonewall Jackson High School, which has operated the ParentLink Web site for nearly four years. "Acquiring technology and implementing it and standing back with your arms folded will do nothing.

"Technology is a wonderful vehicle, but it should not be the only vehicle," said Constantino, whose doctoral thesis dealt partly with the effect of parental involvement on student achievement.

Getting parents involved is a perennial problem for schools. Working parents may be pressed for time, immigrant parents may not speak English well, and parents of all descriptions may be dealing with teenagers who clam up as soon as conversation turns to schoolwork.

"You don’t see much," said Kathleen McBride of her eighth-grade son, who attends Glasgow Middle School in Fairfax County. "And I’m sure he’s not alone" in deciding what his mother should see and not see, she added.

Glasgow is rolling out an online system, hoping, like other schools, to address the problems of time and taciturn teenagers. Parents can check the programs any time that’s convenient for them. And they don’t have to depend on mid-quarter status reports, called "interims," or other notes that can be shoved into a book bag, never to be seen again.

Web-based school information systems are growing fast. In Fairfax, 19,000 students were enrolled in FCPS 24-7 Learning in June and 55,000 students by December. Montgomery County uses eClass, among other systems; Prince William is rolling out a program called EduLink; and many teachers have their own sites. Some services are connected directly to teachers’ grade books; others require teachers to make separate entries.

Dee Korch, a parent at Bull Run Elementary in Centreville, said she signs on to FCPS-24-7 every day to check her children’s homework assignments. Over time, she has come to rely on it, as she learned recently when one of her daughter’s teachers was slow to update his information.

"You kind of wonder, ‘What’s he teaching them?’ " Korch said. "You like to be on top, instead of them getting behind."

Donna Wilder, a math teacher at Stonewall Jackson High, uses her school’s combined computer-and-voice mail system to post homework assignments. Parents can check grades weekly. "If a child has [an overall] grade of C, it’s nice to be able to see what’s in that C," she said.

Even as the online offerings grow, however, educators say there will always be a need for old-fashioned, low-tech interaction — phone calls, letters and conferences. Not all parents have Internet access, and nothing replaces the human touch.

Maggie Massey, an Annandale High School parent, said the school’s online system, used more by some teachers than by others, doesn’t replace the "general information gathering" she does when she volunteers or goes to parent-teacher meetings.

Dorothy Harris, a science teacher at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, doesn’t use Montgomery’s Web sites, preferring to write assignments and objectives on the blackboard and talk to parents who have questions.

Harris said she enjoys the personal contact and wonders whether Web sites shift too much responsibility from students to parents. "It’s only so much a teacher’s going to do and a parent’s going to do. At a certain point, that child’s going to have to do."

Willett, the Gaithersburg mother, agrees that the schoolwork is ultimately James’s responsibility. She sees the Web as another way to ensure that he is fulfilling it.

James is noncommittal — perhaps proving her point. "It’s kind of a pain in the neck because my mom’s always breathing down my neck," he said. "But it makes me a better student, I guess."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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