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School district posts grades online

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By Lawrene Calder Trump, Staff Writer 11:13 PM Tuesday, February 15, 2011

SPRINGFIELD — Students have a hard time playing parents against teachers now that everyone’s on the same Web page regarding homework, attendance, grades and classroom behavior.

ProgressBook, an Internet-based electronic grade book where teachers post assignments and quiz grades for their students, was opened this term in the Springfield City School District to parent access from home computers.

Clark County’s six local school districts are among the three-fourths of Ohio schools that use ProgressBook online applications. The system is used by more than 650 school districts across the U.S., according to the company’s Website.

Springfield Schools bought the software in the 2008-09 school year, started more widespread use with elementary teachers the following year, opened it up to middle and high school teachers this school year and Jan. 24 turned on the parent access.

Letters went home to parents to let them know how to use the system.

Teachers are used to using the system to post attendance, grades and assignments, but now can click a check-box and publish their information to the Web, said Stacy Parr, city schools director of technology.

Parents can view data the moment teachers save it, giving them an easy to use, real-time way of monitoring their child’s academic progress throughout the school year. Students too can easily keep track of their current grades as both the student and parents are given a unique login and password.

Parents can even sign up to receive e-mail notifications if their child receives a failing grade on an assignment or fails to turn in homework. The district will continue to send home grade cards and interim report cards.

After the first week of parent use, the tally on Feb. 4 was 48 parents of high schoolers, 55 parents of middle schoolers and 145 parents of elementary students had logged into the system.

“Those were unique first-time log-ins, so we were really happy to see those numbers so soon,” Parr said.

Parr introduced the system at Northwestern Local Schools before coming to the Springfield district last year. She also worked with ProgressBook as a pilot program in the Hillsboro City Schools before that.

The district offers training in use of the software to all teachers. No one seems reluctant to use it, but some have trouble making time for the training during their busy work schedule, Parr said.

Parr credits ProgressBook with changing her stepson’s academic life.

“His dad is able to log in three times a day and check his assignments and work. He was struggling and now he’s an honor roll student. We attribute that to the online reports from teachers,” she said.

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