Online Grade Books Tell Parents What Happened in the Classroom

By LISA GUERNSEY   -                    for an online demo click here.

    ROBERT WILKOFF likes to keep an eye on how his children are doing in school. But last year he got almost more
    than he bargained for. His daughter's teacher set up a Web site and e-mail system to alert parents to everything that
was going on in class, including each homework assignment, a schedule of tests and the latest rundown on the child's
grades.

"You could go to the homework board and check to see whether you were getting a truthful answer or not," said Mr.
Wilkoff, whose daughter Hannah is in eighth grade at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Md. "This is much more
dependable than hoping your kids bring something home in their backpack."

Mr. Wilkoff is one of thousands of parents who now have a direct channel into their children's classroom through online
grade books posted by teachers. With a password and user ID, parents can log in at any time to check on their children's
grades, attendance, practice-test scores for standardized exams and, in some cases, a comparison of their children's
grades with those of the rest of the class. Some systems also have an e- mail setup in which parents and teachers can
communicate directly.

"It really does take out all the guesswork of being a parent," said Catherine Johnson, whose son Dan is an eighth grader
at Nathan Hale Middle School in Northvale, N.J. Dan's science teacher, Phil Lomonico, posts new homework
assignments weekly on the class home page that often are hyperlinks to reading materials or online projects.

These online exchanges are not simply another outlet for already deeply involved parents, although they certainly are
that. The technology is ushering in a new communication protocol for the classroom. In the past students were typically
the messengers of their own fate, responsible for divulging their grades and bringing home field-trip forms, and parents
saw the inside of a classroom perhaps once a year.

Now many parents have the tools to be nearly omniscient. Without entering the school they can peer into a teacher's
grade book or look at a homework assignment that might otherwise have been simply scribbled on the classroom
chalkboard. Instead of waiting for an interim report to arrive at the house, they can see a slip in grades almost as soon
as it starts — all without relying on their children to tell them what is going on.

"The kids can't really fake it," said Vincent Krist, the founder of Mygradebook.com (www.mygradebook.com), an
online tool that he says is used by more than 70,000 parents and 600,000 students. "Mom can get into e-mail at work,
and before you get home, she knows you didn't show up at school."

For many parents and teachers, this is ideal. But Jamie McKenzie, an educational consultant and former teacher,
worries that parents might use their newfound knowledge to pester children who should be learning how to take care of
themselves.

"If we are constantly harassing them about how they did on their assignments, we are actually reducing their growth,"
said Mr. McKenzie, who is the editor of From Now On, an online educational technology journal. "We are infantilizing
them."

Brian Fox, an American history teacher at Suffern High School in Suffern, N.Y., used a gradebook site called
ThinkWave (www.thinkwave .com) a year ago, and he said he found that the grades could become points of unhealthy
fixation. "All the parent sees is one little blip, one little bad grade, and the parent starts to panic," he said.

Children aren't the only ones under supervision. Hannah Wilkoff said she thinks that all school districts should have
such a system so that parents can more easily keep tabs on the teachers as well.

"If something happens in a class and you want to switch out of it, your parents might be more open to your ideas," she
said.

Mr. Fox said that one reason he stopped using ThinkWave was the barrage of e-mail he faced from inquisitive parents.
"I was getting a tremendous amount of e-mail saying: `Why didn't you upload the grades?' `What is my password?' "

When online grading tools began to spring up about three years ago, developers were more interested in helping
teachers than parents. ThinkWave started as Windows software that enabled teachers to store grades, tabulate weighted
averages and produce reports. Today, the company says, more than 300,000 people — teachers, parents and students —
have signed up to use it.

Mygradebook.com evolved from a program that Mr. Krist created for his wife, Kristina, an eighth grade English
teacher. Ms. Krist had stored her gradebook on her laptop and lost all her records when it was stolen.

After teachers began storing information on Web sites, they began giving secure access to students and teachers, as
well. Parents rave about the program, said Ms. Krist, who said that many other teachers in her school, Bell Junior High
in San Diego, were also using the product.

Ms. Krist remembers one spring day last year when she used the Web site's e-mail program to show her students that
their parents were now in the loop. She had told her students ahead of time that they would have a substitute teacher,
and even though an essay was due that day, "my students thought they didn't have to do it," she said. The substitute
called Ms. Krist to inform her of the problem, and she sent out an e-mail informing parents that their children had tried
to dodge a deadline.

"They got nailed the minute they got home," she said.

Ted Feinberg, the assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that online
tools can do a great deal of good if they are not abused.

"Parents need to stay involved with their children at all ages," he said. "It's the manner with which you exercise that
involvement that is critical. If it is going to perceived as Mom and Dad rifling through their drawers looking for
contraband, that is not going to be well received."

He is not, however, a fan of sites that post information comparing a child's progress with that of others in the class.
Some teachers say that parents want to verify whether their children are telling the truth when they say everyone else in
their class also failed or got a C. But Mr. Feinberg does not think the drawbacks are worth it. "I think it breeds a
competitiveness or fatalistic giving- up with some kids," he said.

Many teachers acknowledge that the parents who respond favorably to the online postings are often the same parents
who would be involved in their child's work if no Internet existed. Other parents never log into the program, perhaps
because they do not have easy Internet access. Some never respond to bulk or personal e-mail messages, even though
they gave teachers their addresses at the beginning of the year.

In fact, Peter Petrossian, Hannah Wilkoff's teacher, said that a few parents have asked to be taken off his class mailing
list. "It's kind of a shocker," he said.