Article

PowerSchool program lets parents track attendance, test scores online and get e-mails

Sunday, January 28, 2007 • BY GABRIEL H. GLUCK • Star-Ledger Staff

The days of students racing home to intercept a bad report card -- hoping to at least delay the all-but-guaranteed punishment -- may be coming to an end.

In a growing number of schools in New Jersey and across the country, Mom and Dad already will know the less-than-pleasing news.

At Summit High School in Union County, at Holmdel High in Monmouth County and Indian Hills in Bergen County, there are computer programs that enable parents to log in from home or work to see how their children are doing. They can check on that English test last Friday, look up the grade on the last math quiz and even check class attendance, right down to whether their kid cut gym that morning.

And in some districts, parents can receive e-mailed reports on a weekly, or even daily, basis.

While there is no exact count of schools offering online grade access to parents, more than 385 schools in New Jersey and 7,750 across the country already have the software to do it, according to officials at Pearson Education, the company that acquired the popular program PowerSchool from Apple last year.

Many schools use PowerSchool's grade-recording system, but have not opted for the parental access.

Lawrence High School junior Aleeha Fazle admits she was a bit skeptical when the system went live in November.

"Having your parents have access to your grades 24/7, it's kind of awkward. It's kind of scary," said the 16-year-old. "At first I wasn't so crazy about it. But now I love it. I go on it more than my parents do.

"I'm not obsessed, but it's definitely a cool tool," she said.

Aleeha, like a number of other high school students interviewed, said having access to teachers' "grade books" also has enabled them to catch mistakes when a grade for an assignment or exam is entered incorrectly.

Summit Superintendent Carolyn Deacon said teachers used the grade and attendance recording portion of the software for three years before going live this fall with parental and student access.

The decision to make students' grades available to parents was done in large part to address concerns from parents who felt they were not getting sufficient feedback from teachers on how their youngsters were doing, Deacon said.

There was also a feeling that by the time mid-semester progress reports arrived, there was little time left for a student to improve a poor grade.

"It's been great," Deacon said, adding that the middle school will probably go live next year. "We really like it. It's really made us much more efficient."

The program has also been helpful for the parents of students with learning disorders, said Mark McGrath, a guidance counselor at Lawrence High School. If these students have difficulty organizing and keeping up with their schoolwork, parents are able to check on assignments, he said.

Not that all the checking is meeting with universal approval.

"One kid said to me, 'Why did you do that? You got me grounded last week,'" said Lawrence vice principal Dave Milinowicz.

But there are plenty of students who like it.

"It helps you improve your grades a lot," said Nathalie Herrera, a junior at Summit High School.

"At first I didn't like it," said Brittany Butler, a Summit senior who confessed to having intercepted a progress report or two -- but never a report card. "I thought my parents were going to be on there too much."

While they haven't been overbearing, Brittany said, her parents have kept tabs on her. "The other day, my mother said, 'You need to get your grades up.'" Brittany agreed, and said she finds the online records motivating her to work harder.

Not all parents are taking full advantage of their new surveillance powers. While the Lawrence High School system in Mercer County is getting significant use -- 26,000 hits from a school of 1,300 students -- only 161 parents have signed up to have regular academic reports e-mailed to them, Milinowicz said.

"I think these technologies are just fascinating," said Norbert Elliot, whose son, Nick, is a junior at Lawrence. "But I would not want one of these reports. That's using the technology to monitor.

"I don't want (him) to feel I'm using this to pry," Elliot said.

Aleeha Fazle's mother, Harvey, also feels that parents of teenagers walk a fine line.

"I think it is the most amazing tool," Fazle said. "As a parent, I know exactly what's going on. I don't have to wait for the conference, when it's too late to do anything."

But being too overbearing can have unintended consequences, Fazle said.

"I was so on my kids before. I was Big Brother and it backfired," she said. "Just being on them all the time, it was damaging my relationship with them. I decided to take a step back this summer.

"Now they come to me and say, 'Here Mom, look.'"

Still, Fazle has her limits.

"If I saw (class) cuts," she said, "I would confront them."

Students' grades are a mouse click away

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