Parents use online links to monitor students

Every two or three weeks, parent Madelyn Anderson checks on her daughters' grades. No phone calls are required to Anoka's Sandburg Middle School, educational home to eighth-grade daughter Mazie and sixth-grade daughter Hannah.

Nor does Anderson have to resort to interrogation techniques to pry loose any undisclosed scores on last week's quizzes. A few clicks on the keyboard, and there they are, on her computer screen.

Anderson is one of thousands of Minnesota parents who have gained access to "parent portals," electronic information caches that have opened up a world of test scores, homework assignments, bus routes and lunch account balances to the inquiring minds of parents who want to know. Only a handful of districts offered such electronic services as recently as five years ago. Now, any school that isn't using parent portals has fallen behind. "Today, in the electronic age, parents are so up-to-speed on this," said David Kram, manager of software development and support for TIES, a technology consortium of 38 Minnesota school districts. "My guess would be that at least three-quarters of the districts in the state are using this. Parents are demanding it." TIES' own SchoolView system is being used by 38 school districts, mostly in Minnesota but including some districts in Michigan.

"When we first came out with SchoolView, it was primarily [students'] grades," said TIES communications director Kathy Guthrie. "That was in about 2000. Since then, we've added [information on] attendance, homework assignments, discipline, test scores, transcripts, health information and lunch information."

Such services are generally free.

In the Spring Lake Park district, which launched a parent portal five years ago, about 45 percent of the parents of middle and high school students have signed up for accounts, and two-thirds of those parents log in weekly, said district superintendent Don Helmstetter. Mary Wolverton, principal of Sandburg Middle School, which is in the Anoka-Hennepin district, said 85 percent of school parents have access to the school's parent portal. Robbinsdale Schools officials figure 40 percent of their parents districtwide are signed up. David Dahl, principal of Plymouth's Armstrong High School, said 60 percent of the parents are signed up.

"It's part of the culture of the building now," he said.

In Anoka-Hennepin, the state's largest school district, 70 percent of the district parents have requested parent portal access, and the gradebook part of the system gets 33,000 hits a month, said Georgia Kedrowski, district assistant director of technology and information services.

The most popular facet of parent portals is the online grades. Parents who sign up can often use their computers to check on test scores, overall grades, and assignments. Often, parents and teachers say, the students themselves use it to get up-to-speed on what assignments are due or whether their grades stand. And though it's tough to measure what kind of impact such computerized systems have on grades, some teachers and parents think parent portals serve as an extra prod to get those grades up. "My oldest daughter said, 'I kind of like it, Mom, because you know where I'm at,'" Anderson said. "She was a C and D student in sixth and seventh grade, but now she made the A honor roll in the third quarter and is in line to do it again in the fourth quarter. It is one more communication step. It is one more little thing."

Anderson said her other daughter wants the latest information for other reasons.

"She is fanatical about her grades," Anderson said. "For her, it's reassuring."

As for teachers, many schools now require them to post their grades online for parents and students to view. For those who continue to keep hard-copy gradebooks, that can mean some extra work. But parent portals can also cut down on phone calls or e-mails from parents who just want to find out how their kids are doing.

"The downside is that it's only as good as the teachers keep it," she said. "Some teachers plan well in advance and put it in the system well in advance. Others are trying to catch up from tests and papers turned in two weeks ago."