Chicago parents beware: Your kids' grades may soon be one click away

Students have always recognized the teacher's record book as the holy grail of the classroom. Make the grade book disappear, and you can start with a clean slate.

Grades, attendance, and teacher's notes are concealed in the green soft-cover notebook seen only at the beginning of class, and always by the side of its keeper in the hallway.

But for Chicago school students, the days of dreaming about capturing the fold-out grid could be numbered as a Web-based grade book is being tested by Chicago Public Schools. Students and their parents will be able to access the grades and attendance records.

"I think this will be an excellent resource for the parents, especially," said Veronica Mosley-Raggs, a finance teacher at Percy L. Julian High School on Chicago's Far South Side. "They'll have the opportunity to monitor the progress of their child."

The new electronic grade book will increase student accountability and provide increased communication between parents and teachers, CPS officials said. It will make record keeping easier for teachers, and will give principals better access and detail on student performance.

Mosley-Raggs said that most teachers at her school currently use computer-based applications to keep grades and attendance, but opening up the records to parents will help motivate students.

An event this week shows there are risks with systems like this. Jonah Greenthal, a New Trier Township High School student, was charged Wednesday with misdemeanor computer tampering for hacking into his school's database to obtain class rank information.

"The concern that I have is that this information is on the Internet," said William Wright, whose son Brandon will be a freshman at Jackson Language Academy in the fall. "I want to make sure that nobody else can access my child's information."

The digital divide between school systems and the home is also a concern for some. One-third of Americans do not have an Internet connection, according to a 2005 study by PEW, a non-profit research organization.

In a 2006 survey, PEW found that 39 percent of African Americans and 25 percent of English-speaking and bilingual Latinos never go online. Latinos and African Americans make up more than 86 percent of the student body at Chicago Public Schools.

"CPS is aware that many students/parents may not have the means for a home computer, however students are only one of our intended users," a CPS spokesman said in an email. "Nevertheless, CPS has more than 125,000 computers in our schools, many of which are open after hours."

The new system will begin to be adopted citywide during the 2008-09 school year, officials said. However some functions, such as parent and student access, will be rolled out in phases. The electronic grade book will not replace report card pickup days, and is meant to complement the parent-teacher relationship, school officials said.

"Report card pickup days are a critical part of the current culture and involves communications between parents and school staff that is too valuable to replace," said a school spokesman.

Despite Wright's concerns, he says the system will have a positive impact on his son's performance. "It will cause him to stay on top of things more because he knows that I would be able to find out if he was staying up to par on his assignments," said Wright.

"They should have been doing this a long time ago."