Power School for Parents
Watch the following Quick Time movie for more details. Parent Portal
By providing real-time access to things such as: Attendance,
grades, and discipline, parents can be much more proactive in
monitoring a students progress. This approach will allow teachers,
parents, and students to truly develop a personalized education
plan designed to optimize the student’s individual strengths, while
focusing on their weaknesses, ultimately leading to much greater
student achievement.
The lynchpin of this approach is parental involvement. Study after study has validated the fact that active parental interest and participation in their child’s education is THE single most important determinant of a student’s achievement. It is not a student’s ethnicity, gender, or even economic status that will influence academic achievement. It is the active interest and involvement of the parents and guardians to their child’s schoolwork and activities on a daily basis that will ultimately underwrite student progress. This is where the PowerSchool Parent Portal comes in to play, so lets take a look!
PowerSchool Parent
Portal
Once logged into the system, students and parents will
see a variety of options to view across the top of the page.
This page that initially appears is called the Grades and Attendance Screen. On the Grades and Attendance page, a parent or student can get a real-time view of last and this week’s attendance by period, as well as total absences by period for the current term, and past terms. These absent and tardy totals are clickable, and will reveal the dates of each attendance event. Back on the Grades and Attendance screen, you can also view the cumulative grade for each course the student is currently enrolled in. This view provides a quick summary of exactly where a student stands in each course or subject area for the current term. These are the grades as they exist in the teacher’s grade books… right now. This real time information on current grades helps parents and students understand exactly what areas require extra attention. For example, Cody Andrews has always been a 4.0 student and his parents notice that as of today, he is only getting an 89 in Mr Luhman’s Sociology class. Now, they would like to know why Cody has slipped… To find out the details behind the 89 in Sociology, Cody’s parents simply need to click on the “89” link, and PowerSchool will present the parents with a list of every single assignment, test and quiz that make up that grade. They quickly see that Cody got an F, or 50%, on the chapter 18 reading, which certainly impacted his overall grade. Of course, Cody’s parents will certainly want to know more about that particular assignment and what they can do to help Cody master the topic.
To find out the details of that particular assignment, Cody’s
parents simply need to click on the Chapter 18 Reading link and it
will bring up all of the details for that particular assignment.
The assignment topic, chapter, required questions, and MOST
importantly other resources are presented here to help the parents
and student learn more about the topic. With this information,
Mathew’s parents now know exactly how to help Cody master reading
assignments. Of course, it’s also VERY easy for Cody’s parents to
email the teacher for additional suggestions or resources to
help.
What continues to make this parent portal the most successful in K-12 education is the fact that a tremendous amount of detailed information is updated on a regular basis. The secret to the dynamic nature of the parent and student web portal is the fact that teachers are only asked to simply use their electronic grade books. As they enter assignments, scores and attendance, PowerSchool will be automatically updated with the latest information. No extra effort is required from teachers.
The student’s parents might want a quick view of grades from
previous terms. This will enable them to better understand their
kids overall grade point average and, again, better understand
where to apply some time and energy to beef up a child’s weak
subject or topic areas.
Parents might want a quick view of attendance history. This will enable them to better understand any attendance patterns that may be impacting their performance, such as excessive absences or tardiness in a particular class.
Parents might want to receive email notifications of certain situations or events that might require their intervention, such as poor scores on recent assignments, unexcused absences, and so on. These email updates can be scheduled as frequently as daily, and might include other parents, noncustodial parents, aunts, uncles, grand parents, and so on. This is an extremely popular and powerful tool that will enable parents to really keep a pulse on what is going on with their child at school.
Next, the student’s parents might want to view any teacher
comments that have been posted, for example, suggest tutoring,
pegged me in the eye with a spitball, needs to improve on test
preparation, and so on. Again, this will enable parents to really
keep a pulse on what is going on in
each individual class.
The student’s parents might want to view the School Bulletin to keep tabs on the upcoming school activities, lunch menus, notes from the principal, etc.
That way, when Johnny says he is going to the football game on Friday night and there is NOT a football game scheduled a parent could probe a little further.
While we have not covered every aspect of the PowerSchool Parent Portal, hopefully, you now know how you can truly stay on top of the daily happenings with your children’s education and how you can become an even more active member of the education process. With PowerSchool providing the critical information to developing a personal education plan for EVERY student, we can truly maximize the potential of our future leaders!
(excerpts from the Power School Training materials)