Monitoring Student Performance Online- Helpful or Invasive?

A recent article from the New York Times discussed many new programs that schools all over the country have been using. These programs are designed to provide a complete, updated record of students' grades and attendance to those who find the information valuable, i.e. students wanting to know how they stand and parents wanting to find out that which their kids would not have told them otherwise. Since the creation of these programs, there has been great debate over whether or not this is disrespectful of students' privacy or a helpful tool for involved parents to use.

I personally believe that these programs are completely invasive and provide parents with information that they don't need to know that frequently. They result in additional chaos within families today, as bad grades have now become an even bigger problem in the eyes of concerned parents. According to the article, "On Facebook, in typical Internet shorthand, a teenager writes: 'I walk into my house and I don’t even get a ‘hello son, howd your day go?’ I get yelled at bcuz I failed a test.'"

I also think that this idea of constant and complete access to grades puts far too much emphasis on simply getting a good grade. Without the true motivation from the school system to learn and apply the material that is taught, actuall intelligence is rapidly declining, while cheating has occurred much more frequently. "Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. 'When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’' she said. 'And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.'"

Overall, I stand by my opinion that these invasive new programs are just one example of how technology can have significant negative effects upon our daily lives, and I believe that no good can possibly come from this unnecessarily anxiety-raising system. Student privacy should be acknowledged, and parents should learn to cope with the standard report card system that by no means should be replaced.