Spying on your kids (their grades that is)

The New York Times published a story this weekend about parents who obsessively check their kids' grades via online tools provided by the school. I thought it showed very clearly how technology tools can easily add to the stress of raising a teenagers without providing very much in the way of positive benefit. If your child is failing a class, there should be direct communication - hopefully between everyone involved, the parent, the student, and the teacher. In my experience, a single grade does not accurately express what is happening over the long term in a given class. And it is emphasizing the final product over the process of learning.

But that is just my opinion. I pulled out a couple of paragraphs to illustrate how some of the experts (by which I mean teenagers and educators) quoted in the story feel about these online grade-checking tools.

From [one] teenager: “Before, the screaming and disappointment only had to be endured four times a year. Now it can happen every night.”

And this: “ive been grounded twice for the same grade ... once when my mom found it on edline and again when I actually got the grade a week later.”

Some parents refuse to use the software, but many students check their grades to the point of obsession. Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. “When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’ ” she said. “And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.”

and

“Family involvement is not about serving parents,” said Joyce Epstein, director of the National Network of Partnership Schools. “It’s about mobilizing all the resources that support student success. These technologies can hurt or help, depending on how they are done. But the interpersonal connections of teachers, parents, students and counselors really are necessary to go beyond the impersonal technologies.”