Do Schools Really Need To Give Parents Live Updates on Students' Performance?

This new school-to-parent pipeline allows parents to micromanage yet another aspect of their kids' lives.

Big Brother—and Parent, and Teacher—are watching.

Across America, teachers are uploading students' grades to digital portals on a weekly, daily, or sometimes hourly basis. They are posting not just grades on big tests, but quizzes, homework, and in-class work too. Sometimes teachers give points for day-to-day behavior in real time: Did he raise his hand before asking his question? No? Points are docked. Parents are notified. So are the kids.

The pupil panopticon starts in elementary school and just doesn't stop.

In one high school, I am told, the grading portal changes color when the grade, even on a single assignment, pushes the kid's average up (green) or down (red). This can fluctuate by the hour, which means so can a kid's feelings of joy or despair. Parents can enjoy the same stomach-churning experience because they, too, have access to the portals, for better or worse.

"If I have to hear one more time from my wife about how our son isn't going to college because he forgot to hand in a single homework assignment or did bad on ONE test I'm gonna fucking lose my mind!" is how one father expressed it on Reddit. "All it does is annoy the shit out of him, annoy the shit out of me, and damage his relationship with her. That's it."

That really is it. Even many of the parents who say the portal helps them keep their kids on track still admit it's a source of stress. They get an extra helping of angst when they watch their kids nervously await the exposure of their grades.

This new school-to-parent pipeline allows parents to micromanage yet another aspect of their kids' lives. They already track their kids' locations, via devices and AirTags. And of course, they sign the kids up for organized activities, so the kids are always doing something adult-supervised and parent-approved. Now they have become an invisible presence in one place they used to be banished: the classroom. The message for parents is they should always be watching their kids, even as their kids grow up under a microscope, telescope, and periscope.

I asked for comments on the portals via Facebook. Many people who responded asked me not to use their full names because they're upset about the system but don't want their kids to suffer extra for their indiscretion. "My son has ADHD and minor anxiety and he is obsessed with the grade portal—he's 11," wrote Jen, a mom in Marshall, Texas. "When he's waiting for a quiz or test grade, he's constantly trying to check and refresh the page. It's disturbing."

Beth Tubbs is a therapist in the Pacific Northwest who sees a lot of young people with anxiety. She says these portals aren't helping. When grades are available to students and their parents in real time, "Everything feels high stakes," Tubbs says. She's had tweens tell her, "I'm really anxious because I got a C on my geometry test and that means I'm not going to get into a good college."

Since a lot of parents are just as anxious, the ever-present portals can create a feedback loop. The parents worry that if they aren't on top of things, their child might not be successful. So they're always checking the portal, which makes the child worry that any bad grade means the end. Repeat this day after day, and it starts to feel as if grade portals may be one unexamined reason kids' anxiety is spiking.

It's not just the high school juniors and seniors who are suffering. ClassDojo is a popular portal that allows teachers to grant and dock academic and behavior points starting with kids as young as age 5.

"Depending on the teacher's updating habits, you may get pinged with updates throughout the day on how well your child is sharing, sitting crisscross applesauce, staying quiet when directed, and following other classroom expectations," writes Devorah Heitner in her new book, Growing Up in Public.

The result can mean no let-up for the parent or the kid.

"Three weeks into my son's kindergarten year, I'm already dreading any notification from this app," a mom named Melissa wrote on an education blog about the app. "The only thing I hear are private messages about what he's done wrong. My workday is spent dreading the notification from this horrible application, and I feel so defeated about school already. I can only imagine what my son's feeling."

The set-up is even making teachers anxious. One told me she accidentally gave a student a low grade on a quiz because of a typo. Within two minutes, the visibly upset student was asking about the quiz and had already been grounded by their mother. "The online Gradebook has had a….questionable.…impact for some students, parents, and teachers," the teacher wrote.

The problem is that the portals have created a whole new student/teacher/parent equation, says Emily Cherkin, author of The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family. Before she became "The Screentime Consultant," Cherkin was a teacher from 2003–2015—that is, both before and after the advent of the portals. When they were introduced in about 2005, she says, she witnessed two things: Her students stopped asking her why they got something wrong on the test, and the parents started asking for them. The portals "triangulated something that shouldn't have been triangulated," Cherkin says.

Gone is the opportunity kids once had to daydream in class, or blow a quiz, or crack a joke. As for the parents, they're almost forced into helicoptering—a fact some are starting to resent.

Melinda Wenner Moyer, author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes and mom of a seventh-grader in upstate New York, says, "I saw my son got a 30 and I brought it up casually like, 'What happened with that social studies thing?' And he said, 'Mom, I've got it handled. It was a mistake and I've talked to the teacher about it, and I see PowerSchool [the portal] too. I'm on top of it and would appreciate it if you would trust me.'" Since then, says Moyer, she has made a concerted effort not to open the portal much, "and it really helped my relationship with my son."

Autonomy is one of the three great needs in any human's life (along with relatedness and competence). Giving kids some autonomy back could be enormously beneficial for both generations, which is why it's time to seriously consider whether the portals are doing what they're supposed to do: help students succeed.

Roseanne Eckert is a defense attorney in Orlando. Her son graduated high school in 2017. For a while, she writes, "I would check his grades at work and come home mad, while he didn't even know the grade yet. I finally decided to stop it and we were all happier. The schools push the parents to be on top of the grades but it is a constant misery. Just say no!" For the record, Eckert adds: Her son was not a straight-A student in high school, but now he's about to get his master's degree in biomedical engineering.

So for anyone seeing a B- on that portal: Shut it down, take a deep breath, and wait a few minutes.

Or better still, years.

Comments

[rbike]

If lucky, I got to see the kids report cards. Mostly average with some moments of excellence. It was their job to do school. I paid the bills. Maybe you think I was a bad parent. They don’t think so.

[MasterThief]

Even as a parent I think this is excessive. Let me know if my kid isn’t doing her work or is otherwise falling behind. Outside of that, I don’t want to micromanage her work. I’m here to help her learn, not get upset over a bad grade. Feeding the constant information is a poor usage of the teacher’s time and encourages helicopter parenting

[mad.casual]

IME, it’s just a tool and a lot of the article feels like “This story wasn’t written for you.”

[CLM1227]

It’s too much over information! I like a year/long syllabus at the start of the year or even quarterly to know what they are doing and in the younger grades, signing Failed assignments or a teacher’s conference if my kid is getting a D/F in the class is really all I need besides the quarterly report card.

My email and home are flooded with papers and messages related to school and it’s like drowning to keep up with it all so I end up missing things that actually need my attention.

[Mickey Rat]

“Giving kids some autonomy back could be enormously beneficial for both generations,…”

Autonomy in their education is legally not allowed for kids in the K-12 years. I wonder how much the objection here is from teachers annoyed about parents keeping an eye on their performance?

[JasonT20]

I wonder how much the objection here is from teachers annoyed about parents keeping an eye on their performance?

I’m a teacher. (HS science) Occasionally I do get parents that are quick to respond to a student’s grade drop from one test or task and wince at the anxiety they express. An enormously more prevalent problem are the parents that don’t seem to ever check this information. They are shocked that their child is failing in December when they haven’t responded to the several emails I’ve sent, voicemails I’ve left, or just checked to see what their grade was online at any point since the beginning of the year. Then they ask if their child can still turn in the assignments that were due the first week of November. Or retake the 3 tests the child failed.

There definitely is a sweet spot in between parents looking at a child’s grades on every assignment every day and never checking on anything for a whole semester. (Or even seeming to notice that their child was absent 40 days out of 80.) My observation is that far more parents are on the inattentive side of that sweet spot than the obsessed, micromanaging side.

[jimc5499]

Lenore,
I agree with you about 90% of the time, this time I am going to have to disagree. For years the Teacher’s Union mantra has been that parents are not involved enough in their children’s education. Then we had COVID and remote learning. During remote learning, there were some school districts and teachers that didn’t want parents to be involved. When the parents got involved and found out what was being taught they started going to School Board meetings and complaining. This got them to be labeled “domestic terrorists” by the FBI.
After the way the a School Board in Virginia tried to hide the RAPE of a female student by a “transgender” student, going so far as to changing the “transgender” student’s school and pressing charges against the Father of the student that was raped, I believe that schools need to be more transparent and parents should have the right to monitor their child while they are in school.
Interesting thing here. The Company that I work for has a co-operative program with a local high school. Students attend classes for half a day and come to work with us for the other half. It’s worked out very well for both sides. I had to go to the the Company that does the “background checks”, last week to have mine renewed. While I was there I found out something interesting. The cost of the “background check” is $225. That’s a business expense for me. One of the women who was processing my paper had a flyer from the Company touting the advantages of the “checks”. One of those “advantages” was reducing the number of parents who volunteer at their child’s school.
Sorry, until this crap is weeded out, I’m kind of with those parents.

[But SkyNet is a Private Company]

THIS

[Rossami]

None of the things you’re complaining about are helped (or hurt) by these constant “grade” portals.

Yes, parents should be involved – in the things that matter! Micromanagement of individual quiz scores and homework completion is not one of them.

[CLM1227]

^

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Yup. How about body cams on teachers and principals?

[шинка]

Fucking luddites.

This technology allows us to take more acute measure at a higher frequency thereby increasing the quality of the data being collected. There are people, like myself, who benefit from this regular flow of data to adjust our behaviors to influence the data and achieve desired outcomes.

Just because there are a bunch of people who are snowflakes and pussies doesn’t mean that this tech doesn’t benefit an entirely different group who can deal with criticisms and uses them as a catalyst for greater achievement.

Bunch of fucking whining luddite pussies.

[SQRLSY One]

Ass for me, shit’s snot the data-density or bandwidth that bothers me… Ass some have said right here, we are free to ignore the data if we want to.

Twat bothers the shit out of me is the weak link, human’s inability to forgive if snot forget. How many times have we heard of a politician (or even a simple employee with just a tad of visibility) shot down in flames because of some stupid joke they posted at age 18? Wait until the enemies of POTUS candidate Mindy the Anti-Mork get ahold of the fact that she flunked her geometry quiz in 8th grade! And don’t tell me that the school records are hack-proof, because well-informed people know better than that!

[Rossami]

Fucking moron who doesn’t understand the point of the article. The point is not merely the frequency of the observations but that the act of observation changes the behavior. And in this case, changes it in quantifiably negative ways.

For an example in more obvious context, consider trying to lose weight by weighing yourself 12 times a day. That over-measurement causes people to fixate on things they can’t (and shouldn’t) control. For another example, look at the extensive research on how paying too much attention to stock prices fluctuations leads to substantially worse personal finance discipline.

[mad.casual]

Ah, right. The classic “The scale caused me to gain weight by making me step on it all the time.” studies.

You don’t want anyone to get any better, you just want to highlight and enhance their pathological dependency.

Fucking ghoul.

[heraclitus]

As someone who was a teacher until I left the profession a couple years ago, I went through a transition at a school that shifted to this kind of policy. And I can definitely tell you it had a negative impact overall on students’ experience.

Your theory is a “higher frequency” increases quality of “data collected,” but that fails to take into account how real-world grading systems often work at schools, where paradoxically the higher-frequency the feedback already is, the less accurate these online grades generally are for significant portions of the school year. As someone who taught statistics, I emphasized this but was ignored.

I want to be clear that I think certain types of regular feedback are extremely important. For years before the adoption of these policies at my school, I had Google Classroom sites that allowed students to easily be able to track if they had any missed assignments or assessments. I taught at the high-school level, and students could choose to invite their parents to also view these Google Classroom sites and be able to see that students were “keeping up” if they wanted. I always emphasized to my students and parents when I met with them from the first day that I’d happily provide an estimate of their average AT ANY TIME upon request. And if I did so, I could give context of what that grade meant (and most importantly didn’t mean).

But showing a “final grade” column that dynamically goes up or down with any tiny perturbation is problematic and leads to a lot of overreactions, from my own experience of what happened at my school.

Just to take the example of my math classes — I generally treated most homework and daily assignments as “completion grades.” My philosophy was the a student’s first attempt at a new concept was exploratory, and they didn’t deserve grade penalties. So, they’d get feedback on what they did wrong and we’d go over questions and errors in class, but their homework grades were often effectively “100%” if they were keeping up.

Those grades were not weighted highly in the overall average though, as quizzes, tests, and other assessments were where students actually demonstrated what they had mastered. For years, I taught honors math classes at my school that were often the first place students encountered an “honors” math class. They weren’t prepared for the higher standards and how hard they had to work at first to get a high grade.

So let me explain what would happen every year: students would come in and attempt the harder homework problems. The more conscientious ones would realize things were “off” if they were getting a lot of problems wrong, so they’d work harder right away. But a lot of students didn’t have a good sense until the first quiz, which was often the site of lots of low grades that these students had never seen before in their lives as “honors” students. I’d emphasize in class, however, that most of them COULD make the standards, but they’d need to learn stronger habits, and we’d talk about that. By the time the first test would come around, many would have figured it out. For others, it might take a couple tests.

Anyhow, this simple adjustment to a higher standard over the first month or two of the school year suddenly became a source of even greater stress for many students and parents once they saw a real-time “final grade” update available with every notification of a gradebook entry.

Why? Because for the first 2-3 weeks of homework assignments, they’d see “100%” as their average. I’d stress to them that this was based on homework completion grades and that it was just a tiny portion of their grade, but that’s what they saw. Then… suddenly the first quiz would arrive. Some would see a “FINAL AVERAGE” of a C, D, or even worse. I’d suddenly get a barrage of parent phone calls, even complaints to administrators. I explained what was going on to all students in class, but that message didn’t sink in for many students and parents would go nuts and overreact.

What before had been a point of a “minor failure” that often generated motivation to achieve the new standard became several weeks of higher stress and pressure for students. Even though this was solely the fault of the incompleteness of the current gradebook. The “final average” column was not an accurate reflection of their likely final grade at all!

Now you might argue that students and parents were just being stupid here, that if I had explained the statistical properties of the gradebook, they shouldn’t be overreacting or something. But that’s not how the real world works, unfortunately. Those students who should have been best equipped mathematically to understand this point were often the ones with the craziest parents who’d have overreactions.

And if you think this was confined to the beginning of the school year, you’d be wrong. I cannot tell you how many times I literally overheard students talking about how the “grade resets” after the beginning of the next grade period, so they’d get another 2 weeks or whatever of “100%” average until the real grades kicked in — and they’d boast about it, they’d talk about how things were easier with their parents because of it. Even though it was a statistical fluke just based on the grading system that was meaningless. And then I’d hear them talking about “getting in trouble” over their first quiz grade after they “coasted” for the first few weeks.

Even later in grading periods, once the gradebook “final averages” were a bit more reflective of likely grades, they still caused disproportionate reactions, often from students least likely to understand how averages worked. In the past, I would warn students whose grades actually took a substantial downturn, and sometimes would make parent emails or phone calls. Now students would obsess over tiny fluctuations especially across certain borderlines. Whether they had an 89% or a 91% at a particular moment could be of great concern — and I’d suddenly get panicked students coming up to me, or an email from a parent. “What can my kid do to bring up his grade?” Because the student dropped from a 90.2% to an 89.7% or something.

And the worst part about all of that is that as someone with a high level of statistics training, I knew that my “averages” were never perfect measures of student mastery and ability. That’s why I always did a manual review of all student final letter grades at the end of every period. I never trusted that I could design assessments that somehow would accurately reflect a student’s mastery down to 0.01% or something. So… maybe a student with an 89.7% might sometimes deserve an A based on their overall mastery of the subject, the pattern of their assessments, etc. And I would grant that to them. But the gradebook couldn’t see that or show that.

I tried to make various recommendations to the administration at my school that I thought would be more in-line with feedback that was ACCURATE. I tried to encourage them to omit display of “final average” columns — students and parents could keep track of individual grades, but they wouldn’t see this constant “running total” moving up and down in a way that wasn’t really a good metric for many students. Or to not show such a tally until maybe halfway through a grading period when it would actually have a chance of being accurate. Or at least to only display a letter grade estimate for the final average rather than a percentage down to the hundredth place, as we only gave letter grades on reports anyway.

All of these proposals were met with silence or “our tech can’t do that.” So, instead, I watched as students and parents continuously stressed over things that didn’t matter. I’d say at least 80-90% of student conversations and parent conversations I had due to the new system were unnecessary interventions that were targeting at the wrong time, yet highlighted because of flaws in the feedback system. Meanwhile, the vast majority of my own notifications to parents and students when the problems actually MATTERED were frequently ignored, because those were often with students and parents who didn’t care as much in the first place.

So basically we stressed out the kids (and parents) who already were doing well, while the kids who really struggled just continued to ignore things as they had before. And I was so busy dealing with questions due to the constant feedback that I admittedly probably didn’t have a chance to do as many of my own judgment notifications to struggling students. Basically the “signal” was lost in a sea of stupid +/- 0.1% noise.

[mad.casual]

Basically the “signal” was lost in a sea of stupid +/- 0.1% noise.

Was the system injecting random grades into the portal or are you and your students (and parents) responsible for both the signal and the ‘noise’ that you yourself are broadcasting to your own students and them not filtering appropriately and pushing back to you?

Because it sounds an awful lot like the problem isn’t the system and you’re just really shitty at statistics, signal processing, teaching, information theory, or any/all of the above.

[mad.casual]

So let me explain… Then… suddenly the first quiz would arrive. Some would see a “FINAL AVERAGE” of a C, D, or even worse. I’d suddenly get a barrage of parent phone calls, even complaints to administrators.

Rightfully so. If I created a production system and set up a statistical control model that worked like this either the system I’m trying to control is fundamentally broken or my controls are fundamentally fucked up. Either way, I’m responsible and blaming it on my controls is a shitty excuse that *should* get me shitcanned. Especially if I keep doing it time after time after time.

Maybe the system works fine and I should be weighting some controls more or less than the others but the idea of blaming it on the calculator, spreadsheet, dashboard because it does the calculations, correctly, in real time or publishes them on the web in real time rather than when I press “Enter” is just abjectly stupid for anyone teaching HS Mathematics to say. “Ugh! My abacus displays the results in real time and my calculator always uses more than 3 decimal points of precision when available/relevant! I can’t do or teach math under these conditions!”

[Rossami]

You are entirely missing heraclitus’ point. The “noise” is inherent to the measurement tool. You are trying to measure understanding but can only ever measure completion of sample problems. Unless you have some magical way to telepathically assess true understanding without the fallible intermediary of testing, that is.

Rather than tell someone who literally taught the subject that they’re “really shitty at statistics”, etc, maybe you should study some of those topics yourself. As someone with rather a lot of statistical training and experience myself, heraclitus’ assessment is spot on and yours is wrong.

[mad.casual]

 

Such criticisms of interpretation are usually treated as falling within the domain of statistics. They are often made by professed statisticians against the work of others whom they regard as ignorant of or incompetent in statistical technique; and, since the interpretation of any considerable body of data is likely to involve computations, it is natural enough that questions involving the logical implications of the results of the arithmetical process employed, should be relegated to the statistician. At least, I make not complaint of this convention. The statistician cannot evade the responsibility for understanding the processes he applies or recommends. My immediate point is that the questions involved can be dissociated from all that is strictly technical in the statistician’s craft, and, when so detached, are questions only of the right use of human reasoning powers, with which all intelligent people, who hope to be intelligible, are equally concerned, and on which the statistician, as such, speaks with no special authority. The statistician cannot excuse himself from the duty of getting his head clear on the principles of scientific inference, but equally no other thinking man can avoid a like obligation.

– R. A. Fisher The Design Of Experiments

The portal isn’t generating the problems or grades or the frequency of their administration or update, heraclitus is. It doesn’t do anything without his agency. You don’t have to be R. A. Fisher to understand this. Just slightly more intelligent than a monkey solving every problem it encounters with a club. Quit embarrassing yourself, heraclitus, and everyone who taught you science and/or statistics… or tried… or just how to wave tiki torches performatively in order to get planes to land.

Seriously, my tween, let alone my teenagers, could see through this retardation. The idea that you’re fooling anyone is just a sad reflection on the fact that the portals are hardly the worst problem with the American public education system.

[шинка]

I teach too at two different universities and understand the complexities that come with evaluation. unfortunately, the imperfect evaluation structure is what we have, and it is largely imposed on us and our classrooms. I have one class where I didn’t want to have any exams, but the administration frowned on that. The class performed a lot of in-class experiments that were more valuable than testing, but, alas, I was told to have at least one exam.

However, you cannot measure progress without an established baseline and goals to achieve. We assess our abilities against how efficiently we can move from that baseline to the goals that were given to us.

[Balloon maker]

It’s not my problem that some parents get unhinged about the constant updates. You don’t HAVE to look at it.

Google classroom is useful for my family, because my son has a learning disability and occasionally shuts down and refuses to do work, or spaces an assignment. We sit down on Friday, take a look, and see if he has any missing grades. If he gets a C on a test, he gets a C in a test. Do better next time. If he misses shit that affects his grade, we have him make up the work.

[Square = Circle]

It’s not my problem that some parents get unhinged about the constant updates. You don’t HAVE to look at it.

^

All of the “harms” cited are from parents who clearly are way too obsessed with academic achievement, which is the root problem. The reporting or lack thereof doesn’t change that.

Is your kid not getting straight-As and may not get into Harvard as a freshman? Guess what – they’ll be OK.

[Longtobefree]

Is ignoring the ‘portal’ a misdemeanor, or a felony?
Just refuse to participate until you can rearrange your finances to allow home schooling or a knuckle rapping nun school.
Or better yet, get active as hell in the school board politics and stop the madness.
(feel free to ignore me, my youngest is now 37)

[Social Justice is neither]

Or, if you cannot get out, just use it once a week to review and maybe spend some time with your kids going over trouble spots from the last week. This whole article is “if a tool can be abused it must be banned” style of logic.

[mad.casual]

And not just abused but abused in one relatively specific way.

The system is by no means immune to the, age old, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off/War Games/”You think that’s air you’re breathing now?” forms of abuse in the other direction.

[Fist of Etiquette]

As long as the portal doesn’t display the kid’s current pronouns.

[Nobartium]

I disagree, teachers have very low ways of measuring their success directly, and since my property taxes pay their salaries, I deserve some useful metric to judge them by.

[TJJ2000]

Dude. You didn’t pay for a service. You got robbed by ‘armed-theft’ criminals who will solely decide for themselves what if anything you get.

The #1 ?blessing? of Commie and Socialism. The criminals run the asylum.

[TJJ2000]

No, No, No… It’s not the constant harassment depressing the kids it’s all that porn!!! /s

This is just more ?blessings? from your commie-indoctrination camps. Someday someone will think maybe there should be more than one-single Politician Overloaded option that qualifies as education and isn’t such an emergency it requires ‘armed-robbers’ for it’s funding.

Maybe supply and demand should play a part.

[Rubbish!]

Just a new(er) tool in the surveillance kit. Get used to it kiddos, your every move is being recorded. Mom & Dad are part of the machine now, so don’t look to them for any comfort or relief. But they can opt out and choose not to hover. Good luck to ya.

[Don't look at me!]

Hey, just get straight A’s and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

[TJJ2000]

To quote you directly, “Stop Resisting!” 🙂

[Ajsloss]

And of course, they sign the kids up for organized activities, so the kids are always doing something adult-supervised and parent-approved.

Recent criticism leveled at me by the magistrate in my custody case: “Father values his one-on-one time with the child more than he values the child participating in activities… it would be very positive for the child [during Father’s parenting time] if Father just watched the child from the sidelines.”

[Truthteller1]

The mentally ill and perpetually miserable millennials want to be certain their children suffer the same fate.

[JeremyR]

Seems like it’s more a problem for some mentally deranged parents (like the guy’s wife) than anything.

[mad.casual]

Right. If you aren’t a neurotic AWFL, the child of one, or married to one, “This story wasn’t written for you.”

[Mike d]

Fwiw, when I was in elementary school (early to mid 90’s) [this was in Louisiana]; all my test papers and quizzes would get stapled and sent home to get signed usually at the end of the week. The rule changed around 6th grade I think where only tests that you failed had to get signed + your report card at the end if each quarter; and then it was just get your report card signed. So I think the only difference is that the grades get sent immediately (depending on the teacher I guess).

If anything, the current system might actually produce less anxiety since it’s not like you have a whole week to mull it over knowing that you f-ed up and your parents will find out about it

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

FWIW this tech-based helicopter parent service persists into college. Parents may or may not see grades (as “adults” students have to give permission) but my college sends out plenty of parental reminders about upcoming student deadlines and things like finals exams. And almost all the messages focus on how parents need to help their children cope.

[NoVaNick]

This has been in the works for a long time. I read about 15 years ago of a mom on Long Island (where else?) who took the SAT herself several times before her daughter took it. Then you have the parents who get an apartment near the kid’s college. The apron strings never end.

[Apollo 1]

Parents, especially mothers, are becoming more and more co-dependent with their children. They need to stop listening to the mental health experts and cut the cord.

[NoVaNick]

I think most mental health experts advise parents to not be so obsessed with their kids’ success (or failures), it’s the teachers and school admins who are pushing it.

[NoVaNick]

One could look at this as preparing kids for working in cubicles where their performance will be evaluated every minute/hour/day. And if the lean sigma score shows they’re behind the curve, it’s out the door.

[AT]

You guys have a real hard-on for severing the parent/child relationship, don’t you.

What is that?

[BBB]

“Helicopter parenting” is one way to interpret this.

Another way is “Schools and teachers covering their butts.”

I have family members who are teachers. 90%+ of current parents, even of advanced/honors students, will believe their children before they believe anything the teacher says. These systems provide the needed evidence to refute the little dears’ misrepresentations.

Parent: “Johnny says he never knew he was missing that assignment. I didn’t know either.”
Teacher, without these systems: “Well, it was due on the 5th, and was never turned in.”
Teacher, with these systems: “Well, all of you can see all the assignments at any time, and all the missing grades.”

Parent: “I had no idea Susie was failing. She says she’d didn’t know, either. Why didn’t you tell either of us?”
Teacher, without these systems: “You should ask her from time to time. She hasn’t made better than a 40 on any assignment this grading period.”
Teacher, with these systems: “I work to put grades in on a timely basis. You are welcome to see Susie’s progress at any time.”

This is a complete CYA maneuver. Parents have no excuse for not knowing how their kids are doing, whether they check it multiple times a day or once every four months. The kids cannot reasonably say, “I didn’t know,” because there’s the info right there, in its (possibly painful) glory.