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Harford puts grades on line
The Aegis - February 24, 2006
Students, listen up. Parents, your time has finally come. And teachers, your job may become a little easier.
Report cards could become a thing of the past with the recent implementation of a web-based program to access student grades.
A term commonly known at home and at school - Edline - has created a more sophisticated way for keeping track of student learning in Harford County Public Schools.
[Edline]…is designed for middle and high school teachers to easily make classroom information available on the Internet, updating grades and posting test schedules as often as they choose.
Each student is given an access code and password at the beginning of the school year, that can be used to get on Edline throughout their high school years and check their grades.
Parents can obtain an Edline account by contacting their children’s schools for more information.
Harford County students and parents are only able to view their own grades. Other students’ grades cannot be accessed, according to Phil Snyder, Edline and GradeQuick trainer and a math teacher at C. Milton Wright High School.
More than 1,400 teachers were trained in using Edline last year by seven other teachers who previously had been trained at C. Milton Wright High School. The program’s official start was at the beginning of this school year.
Although the program is said to be extremely beneficial to both students and parents, teachers are not required to participate in Edline on a weekly basis.
The minimum requirements for teachers is to update the site at the middle of the quarter and at the end, Snyder said.
Some teachers, however, choose to update the site on a more regular basis.
David Jahnke, a U.S. History teacher at Harford Technical High School, maintains an Edline site for six history classes.
Jahnke says he updates Edline at least every couple of weeks, if not once a week.
“It’s an incredible tool,” Jahnke said of Edline.
As a fifth year teacher at Harford Tech, Jahnke said the number of phone calls from parents has dropped tremendously, though e-mails are on the rise.
“Parents really enjoy it,” he said, adding they like the ability to e-mail him directly from the site when looking at their children’s grades.
Feedback from students is a little different.
From a teacher’s perspective, Jahnke says, student feedback on Edline is split.
“The kids hate it because the parents get to see their grades,” he said, adding students beg him to post their grades after they go on a ski trip or participate in some other special activity.
Jahnke says he just tells them to do their homework.
On the other hand, Jahnke said, a lot of students enjoy Edline because they like the ability to check and monitor their grades and it gives them the ability to e-mail teachers as well.
“In a lot of aspects, the kids do enjoy it that way,” he said…
According to Will Garrett, student representative on the Board of Education, …“Edline is an awesome program, however teachers are not utilizing it to its maximum potential.”
With the unveiling of Edline, Garrett said students and parents will communicate better and parents are more willing to get involved.
And Edline has done just that for Fallston parent Tracy Lane.
With children in the eighth grade at Fallston Middle School and the 11th grade at Fallston High School, Lane says she feels more involved through Edline.
“I would like to be more involved in school, but don’t have the time,” Lane said. “But in this sense, I really do feel like I am part of what’s going on.”
Before Edline, Lane said she was surprised when progress reports and report cards came out, because she never knew what was going on in school with each of her children, unless she had previously talked to the teacher.
By checking Edline at least three to four times a week, Lane said she always knows what is going on.
“It really is a wonderful, wonderful thing ... I love it,” she said.
According to Angela Knowles, one of several Edline teacher trainers and a Spanish teacher at C. Milton Wright High School, “The ability to update student’s grades following a test or quiz, keeps everybody honest and students have taken a lot more responsibility for their work.”
“The biggest change is that I don’t have to chase kids around to make things up; they come to me telling me they want to make up,” Knowles said.
With a touch of a button, Edline has opened up a world of communication to many aspects of everyday classroom learning.
And many seem pleased thus far with the school system’s newest web-based program—including parents.
“I think it works great for everybody,” Lane said.