The names Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer, and PowerSchool are becoming more familiar to students and parents around the world. An increasing number of schools are implementing these programs to track their students’ daily progress. These online programs allow parents to see the results of every graded assignment that their child has completed. The teachers update their online grade books every time a new assignment has been graded and parents check this resource whenever they would like to see their child’s grades. Choate has not adopted such a system, however, and there are no current plans to do so.

Caroline Bazinet ’10 argues against the implementation of this resource in high schools: “It might be good for younger kids who haven’t really learned their study skills yet. They don’t know yet that school matters, so parents can monitor to make sure that their kids are focused. But I think when you get older and you start having stress, the additional stress from parents is unnecessary.”

Through these programs, parents are able to check upcoming assignments, incomplete assignments, whether a child has been late to class, discipline notices, and grades on homework, quizzes, and tests as soon as they are posted. Parents can also set up e-mail alerts to their cell phones with any update.

On Facebook, the popular social networking site, 68 groups have been created to protest one of the many programs, Edline. Only five groups endorse the grade-tracking program. Wall posters have commented on the increased discipline that their parents have taken because they have access to all academic records. Some posters even complain that they have gotten grounded twice for the same bad grade—once when it was seen online, and the second time when it showed up on their report card.

Jon Szalan from St. Joseph’s High School wrote on the wall of a group in the internet shorthand, “i don’t even get, ‘hi how was your day’ anymore i just get, ‘look at this test you failed you are grounded.’”

Some students have even gone as far as to hack into these programs and change some of their bad grades in order to avoid punishment from their parents. They share these methods of changing grades in the numerous Facebook groups in order to help each other.

These grade trackers are not only an inconvenience for students. In order for these programs to be successful, teachers must be willing to update their students’ grade books every day.

“I think for teachers, it would be really difficult. It would mean that the teachers would have to give a daily report on each student. We would have to keep a current grade book every day. Some teachers have a hard time even trying to get attendance in,” comments Mr. Berghoff, the dean of sixth form boys and a teacher at Choate.

There are also many other problems that come with these applications. The programs show a zero for any homework not yet due, or any test or quiz not yet taken. As students explain in the Facebook groups, many parents take this to mean that the student has skipped class or has forgotten to do their homework. Also, the applications do not necessarily reflect the students’ full grades.

“One [problem] is that the grade book is not necessarily an all-inclusive analysis of the student’s performance because there are things that a teacher gives credit for that doesn’t show up on a student’s assignment, like class participation,” said Mr. Backon, a Choate teacher and the director of academic technology.

Class participation is a large part of many Choate students’ grades, especially in humanities classes like History and English.

Many Choate students believe implementing such a tracking device would be an unnecessary measure. “I don’t want it to be put into effect at Choate because then my parents would pressure me more about my grades—and I’m stressed out as it is,” explains April Soto ’10.