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Online grades - teachers don't like them because it's another tool to hold them accountable

Listener: David
Category: Education Related
Date: 04 Jan 2010
Time: 21:23:16 -0700
Remote Name: 70.242.183.106

Comments

Pratt,

re: http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/electronic-grade-books-are-now-the-norm-159833.html

Thanks for posting the story from the Austin American-Statesman about Electronic Gradebooks now being the norm. I found a couple of things interesting in this. One was a quote from a teacher complaining that if she didn't enter grades often enough, parents would get upset. Well, welcome to the real world teacher lady! How many of us in business have had customers who "demand" that we be accountable to them?

The impression left by the article is that gradebooks are putting more pressure on teachers and there is no discussion of the time-saving aspect of electronic gradebooks. My mother is a retired Texas school teacher. I can remember her sitting many evenings averaging grades and that was when she had 30 students per class. At 6 to 7 classes, that's a lot of numbers to punch into the adding machine. Electronic gradebooks are enormous time savers.

I believe that every school district should have rules requiring entry of grades within a timely manner by all teachers. Teachers are very well-paid professionals. Electronic access to a child's performance is an invaluable tool for a parent and they should have time to work with the student and school to fix any problems before the final report card is issued. This is why grades must be updated quickly.

There are three other things come to mind:

1. Schools often pay lip-service to the term "parental involvement". They talk about it and say they want it, but usually that is only politically correct talk. Schools and teachers don't want parental involvement. The educrats would rather be left alone to do the job as they see fit without parental interference.

2. I had a teacher friend last spring put this on her Facebook page: "I hope the Legislature gives schools more money so we can have another pay raise." I was shocked by how out of touch this statement was. We all know someone in the private sector who has been laid off. Those of us lucky to still have jobs have probably had to take a pay or benefits cut. Those sucking at the government tit haven't had to make those sacrifices.

3. The same complaining teacher asserts that poor parents don't have access to the internet, therefore online grade books don't help the students who need it the most and that she "has" to reach out to those parents in more traditional ways. So does that mean for the sake of equality we should eliminate online access for all parents (I think that's her secret agenda)? And she fails to mention that every public library I'm aware of in the state has computers with internet access available. And even poor parents have cell phones. Perhaps she should send text messages to those parents.

Thanks again for posting this article and keeping us focused on how inefficient, lazy, and change-resistant the government schools are.

David

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