A Daily Report Card For Your Child?
How often do you have a parent meeting with your child’s teacher? Once, maybe twice a year? Now imagine having a daily report—that’s right, every day—on how your child is doing in school: how she fared on that pop quiz in algebra, how he behaved (or didn’t) in the cafeteria at lunchtime, how much progress she’s making in science or reading or music. Would you welcome this inflow of information, or would it be too much—too intrusive, too much to take in?
I was just talking about all these important and interesting issues with Stew Stout, a former teacher who now works for a New Orleans-based startup called Kickboard (www.kickboardforteachers.com). Kickboard pulls together a whole lot of data—about students’ academics, behavior, and families—and makes it easy for teachers and administrators to view, share and analyze that information. What really caught my attention, however, is that Stew told me that many schools who use Kickboard are sharing this data with parents, by emailing mothers and fathers directly or by sending a printout home with students.
Once- or twice-yearly meetings with teachers may not be enough to inform parents about how children are doing, especially when those kids are struggling in school. And we all know how hard it can be to get information from kids themselves (“How was your day at school?” “Fine.” “What did you learn today?” “You know—stuff.”) But I do wonder just what parents are supposed to do with all of this new knowledge. This may be the next hurdle teachers and parents have to leap: now that we’re beginning to have access to more extensive and sophisticated data about our kids, how do we use it productively?
What do you think?
I support and encourage the continuous feedback between schools and parents regarding student daily academic and behavioral progress. It removes the “surprise” when we need to discuss ongoing issues. However, I did read a comment regarding parent discipline when negative behaviors are reported to the parents. I support consequences, but I am cautious when it comes to it is delayed and out of the framework of the environment where it is expected. Incresing positive reinforcers for the expected behaviors certainly is a proactive approach.
August 6, 2012–today my daughter started back to school. I dread this day on an annual basis like a recurring funeral. Despite that, each year, I do my best to plan, organize and have realistic expectations of my child, her teachers and myself. As a parent of a 10 YO child with Autism, I can’t contribute effectively if I don’t know what happens at school. Getting data and information about the problems or issues is HOW we do our part as parents. I advocate daily exchange if possible. Everyone is busy all the time. MAKE THE TIME FOR THIS DAILY EXCHANGE! And if it happens 70-80 percent of the time, well that’s an acceptable level of performance according to Texas State Education law. But let ME the parent help YOU the teacher; give me info and data to work with on achieving better behavior–teaching MUST be a team effort and we all have something to contribute to a learner.