Are Daily Progress Reports From Stan’s Kids Teachers Too Much?
Stan was talking with The Morning Mash Up’s producer, Mikey Piff, about his kids and mentioned that he had his children’s teachers send his daily emails about how they were doing in school. Mikey Piff thought that daily progress reports were maybe a bit much and brought it up to the rest of The Morning Mash Up. Rich, Nicole, and Ryan all a daily report was going overboard.
Granted though, Stan’s situation is different than most. Stan is from Philly and lives there, but from Monday through Friday he lives with Rich. On Friday, he goes back to Philly to spend the weekend with his family. Stan says because he’s not able to be there during the week to keep up with his kids schoolwork, he has their teachers send him reports about how they’re doing.
Stan can’t rely on his kids to tell him they’re doing well or not. What kid do you know that would voluntarily tell their parents they’re failing? Ryan says that Stan is being a helicopter parent. If he wants to know how his kids are doing, check their report cards, that’s what they’re for. Nicole and Rich can understand Stan wanting progress reports because once the report card is out you can’t do anything about the grades.
However, they think he’s being a little ridiculous getting them every day. Once a week would be fine. What do you think? Do you think Stan is going overboard by getting progress reports every day or is he doing the right thing as a parent, especially considering his situation?
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25 comments
daily reports is overkill, if progress is what you want then a weekly report should be enough. As a teacher, there is no way to have work graded every day and have enough details to tell you progress. If a teacher is observant enough to give you detailed reports daily, it makes me wonder who/what she is letting fall behind. If you just want to know how they are doing emotionally then that’s when you need to start talking with ur kids and not the teacher.
As a teacher I would never have time for this. With 19 other students in my class I cannot send daily contact. Weekly I send home the graded tests this lets the parents know how there child is doing and if they are concerned then they can contact me. Daily contact should be made with your child talking with them, helping with homework, not by the teacher, this teaches your child no responsibility. This is why students are becoming more and more lazy each year b/c their parents won’t give them their own responsibility!
Congrats to you Stan for taking an active interest in your childs education! I am a parent of 2 and have the option to access my childs grades daily through Progress Book which is provided by the public school and can even check out the lunch menu! I believe you said you signed up for this, so this a school wide option and hopefully there are other parents using this great service as well. Since your the school offers this, the teachers would have to plan their time accordingly. Especially with your situation this is GREAT. This would help you feel connected to your children.
I am a mother of one high schooler and a middle schooler. I don’t think checking with your kid school and teacher is a bad thing. I am contact with all their teachers. As a parent u have to be proactive. If they fail so do u, in that sometimes they need help and are ashamed to ask. I am not saying walk them through school but be sure u r doing all that u can do as a parent.
I have to agree with Stan. It happens way too often that Parents never get notices sent home with the students. As for teacher not having time I used to work for a school using PowerSchool and it is no more work for them. All they do is put the grades in the system and leave comments at that time. PowerSchool does all the work sending the notifications to the parents. Teachers have to put the information in anyway so it is no more work for them.
More parents should be like Stan. If the school allows daily reports then they (hopefully) talked to the teachers and they agreed. It’s a charter school so its probably better run than the public ones.
If more parents took an active interest in their kids education we (america) probably wouldn’t have the worst educated kids in the world.
Stan, If you read this, KEEP ON DOING WHAT YOUR DOING! your kids will be one of the few who will get out of school with an education since you are looking out for them.
I have to agree with Kim. As a teacher myself, I have to say it’s overkill! I teach middle school and am required to use an online gradebook to communicate grades to parents. Amusingly enough, after sending home interim grades with comments, I had a parent contact me about their child’s grade after placing 3 comments explaining the grade!!! Parents complain that teachers don’t communicate with them. We feel like we are single handedly killing forests with the amount of papers we are asked to send home that never get there, or that are never read and thrown away.
I think Stan getting them everyday is awesome. I wish my son teachers would do that. He is failing 2nd grade right now. Its like pulling teeth to get answers out of my son and sometimes as well from his teachers. Stan I think you are doing the right thing. Keep of the good work!!!
Daily Reports is a little overkill…my teenage daughter’s school uses a program called Parent Portal which allows me to log in at my leisure and check her grades, if she has a low grade I can click on the grade and it will show me the assignments that have been handed in (or not) and what her grade was for each assignment, her grades have drastically improved since I started reminding her that she has such and such assignment due tomorrow and does she have it done? I love the Parent Portal idea because it allows me to see my daughter’s progress at any time. Stan, I think you are on the right track wanting to be kept informed of your child’s progress at school but daily reports are a little much…maybe weekly would be good?
In Stan’s situation I can see the benefit. Not being able to see your kids during the week can make it hard. A quick little email to send us fine. But communication is a two way street. While teachers try to contact parents where they can, if a parent has a concern they need to take action and contact the teacher! The role of school is to help children learn, but it can’t do it all! Education is a grouping of teacher, staff, child and parents. They all need to work together in order to succeed!
My daughter’s school has a website that the teachers in put the students grades in daily and if the parent wants the progress report they can request it daily or weekly. Plus they are also given a login to check it when they want to. I get them daily. It’s not that I don’t trust her, it is just she is so busy with school and other activities that she can forget something. If I see something that is missing I bring it to her attention and she takes care of it. I like the new system. She is a straight A student in Honors Classes, Concert Band and JROTC, and she is swamped with work so she is bound to forget something at some time. I am just helping make sure it doesn’t happen to often and she is grateful for it.
i think a daily report is too much. i can understand why you would want a daily report, but your not giving your kids air to breathe. you have to let them make mistakes and fail on their own. you cant always be there for them. im not saying dont be in their life and let them fail, but give them space. when your home on the weekends, thats when you should connect with your kids, and be there for them. getting a daily report is telling your kids you dont trust them, and your not giving them any responsibilies. if you keep doing this, when they are older, they will have no respect for you, and rebel.
we have power school too! thank goodness. n My kids a total slacker. I have to check everyday just to be sure he’s turning in homework. Without it – he’d fail
I’m with Stan on this one! My daughter’s elementary school also uses the Power School website and I love it! They email weekly progress reports, but I have the ability to log in daily to check on a test grade or a homework grade before the week is up. Rich, Ryan, and Nicole will understand when they have kids!
I am a former teacher and a parent, and I think DAILY progress reports are a little excessive, Stan! Mid-term reports as well as quarterly reports should be sufficient as far as seeing where your child’s progress is in class. Students takes tests and do homework and weekly grades are given for those things; it is the parents’ responsibility to make themselves aware of the things that are being brought home. Go through your child’s backpack at night, ask them what they had for lunch, TALK to your kids. You shouldn’t have to rely on a daily email from your child’s teacher to keep abreast of your child’s daily acitivities at school.
That being said, teachers don’t mind questions if there are questions to be asked. If you have a concern about how your child stands in class, by all means, ask the teacher. BUT it shouldn’t be a teacher’s job to email you a daily progress report. Teachers are so busy doing other things…sometime neglecting their own families to take care you your’s. Now that’s a sad state of affairs.
Yes I think he is being to much for the kids. Whn I was in school I had to bring a progress report home every Friday. I hated it but looking back on it I believe it was nessasary. I am not sure what everyday shows you that once a week wouldn’t. Life is stressful enough do you need to put that preasure on your children already?
I get daily progress reports about my kids in school because I TALK TO MY KIDS! Yes, parenting means being informed of your child’s progress, but it also requires interaction with your kids. Just receiving these reports doesn’t make you a good parent or a bad one. It’s what you do with the information. So Stan doesn’t trust his kid to provide true updates, that’s his real problem! The daily report is just a band-aid covering the real issue.
I live in Washington and Power School IS the teacher’s official gradebook. The report Stan gets (I get one too but it’s once a week) is something automatically sent. It does not take away from the teachers time from teaching. Power School is our best friend! and our daughter’s worst friend! We know what grade she gets on a test or project a lot of times before she does. If she is continually getting lower grades is a certain subject, it gives her a jump on getting some extra help.
Stan mentioned Power School. This is a great program, we have it Idaho. Parents & students are issued a password at registration and can access grades as soon as they are entered into the system. I think it might be excessive for an email to be sent daily, but only if it has to be done by the teacher. I have a feeling that it may be an automatic setting, and you need to get off of Stan’s back for having an interest in how the kids are doing. So many parents don’t have a clue or even care.
I agree with Stan. Waiting until report card time is not being proactive enough. You can’t help your child if you don’t know what is going on. If your childs teacher is willing to work out arrangements with you to ensure that your child is going to succeed, I say do it!!! My son is in 3rd grade. He is a good boy, but school is not his first priority. His attitude at shool and at home are very different. At school he is not focused and will try to get away with whatever he can, thinking that I will not find out about it. I couldn’t understand why he was doing so poorly at school, but while doing homework with me at home…. he flew through it. I spoke to his teacher and we came up with a system much like Stan’s email system. Since then my sons grades have improved and my son has shown a greater respect for his teacher, knowing that we are in constant contact. I totally support Stan!!
It is a computer generated program that parents can sign-up with. It does not require any extra work for the teacher at all. It just generates an email from the recently inputted grades and the nutritional program lets you know what your children eat and the balance so that parents can see what to input into the account. It too goes into effect every time their meal card is swiped. We all have a lot of options in our life, this is one! Get off Stan’s back-he is being a good parent, more need to! GO STAN!
I’m of the opinion that there is no place for micromanagement of anyone for any reason. I don’t think that there would ever be a need for anything more than a weekly updates. At the same time, I understand there are special circumstances that don’t apply here.
Teach the kids to be mature and responsible for their actions. If the child has a bad day, or a bad grade, no one should care. The process of education is to learn from your mistakes. Sure a parent should be concerned, but give the kids room to grow and develop for themselves. If there is a problem that the teacher would feel warrants contacting the parent the teacher would do so.
But there’s a big question that needs to be answered… Are the kids doing well in school, or do they need the extra attention? It sounds like the kids are good students, if this is the case then daily reports is excessive.
Parents need to take responsibility and be proactive with their children. This appears to be part of a bigger problem. It sounds like Stan is trying to find a way to fill a void, of not being in daily contact with his kids. That is sad. If there is a problem in communication and connecting with his kids they need to find a way to make that work. Then there won’t be this excessive need to “keep in touch” through a third party. In today’s society we tend to put the blame others for our own for situations. We should be willing blame ourselves rather than others for our own problems. This is nowhere more common than around kids, parents like to avoid looking at themselves and their families for things that they should take responsibility for.
Hopefully this can be resolved, because no parent wants to be on the outside of their kid’s lives. But we all are… let remember how difficult it was for our parents to keep in touch with us as kids.
i think it depends. every situation is different. my sister gets one about her son, because he is a kid that gets bored and tends to act up in class. my son is the opposite so i don’t feel like i need a daily or even weekly report. Every situation is different, just like every kid and teacher….
My school district here in Texas has an online system where teachers post all assignments, calendars, notes, presentation, etc. and the gradebooks with attendance are live for viewing, so it makes it pretty easy to stay on top of things for both the student and parent!
I have to say I agree with Stan. It is not overkill to be involved in your childs life. The idea that wanting to know how your child is doing inschool and holding them accountable for their behavior is being a bad parent or a micromanager is fundamentally wrong. How can we raise the next generation to be responsible, respectful people if they have no consequences or guidance and encouragement from the people who mean the most to them? Correcting a problem before it gets too big is responsible. Praising your child for their hard work is responsible.
I believe the idea of letting kids do what they do because they are kids leads to situations in which kids think they are not accountable to anyone and they can do what they want. Case in point, the poor boy in Florida who was doused with alcohol and set on fire because he reported some boys who stole his dad’s bike.
Learning boundaries and accountablility starts at day one. The situations become more complex as we age. The foundations establish for our children give them the tools to make good choices in life. The future of our society depends on the standards we instill in our children. It is our jobs to be involved and interested in our children’s lives. We are responsible for future generations.
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