Seattle Public Schools is launching this coming school year a new online portal, dubbed The Source, which provides parents and guardians with secure access to student information including grades, homework assignments and attendance.
The goal is to increase parental involvement and improve student achievement.
The portal has specific pages designed for student, parent and teacher use. Each page was developed after significant input from the six schools involved in the pilot project last school year. These schools will be the first to be brought online and include Ballard, Cleveland, Franklin and Garfield high schools and Aki Kurose and Madison middle schools. The rest of the district's high schools will join the network in early October, project manager Ramona Pierson said, and the rest of the middle schools sometime in November.
Elementary schools are slated for January 2006.
Pierson said having instant access to all student information might encourage more interaction among teachers and parents.
"Research shows a critical factor in increasing student achievement is parent and family involvement in the learning process," said Pierson. "Our goal is to foster and encourage that involvement."
The Source parent page allows users to click on tabs that bring up a student's class schedule - including teachers' names, photos, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, homework and due dates, current class grades, and scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and other tests. Project designers also promise an easy-to-use format modeled after Google's user-friendly site. Multiple levels of security also protect student information. Parents must provide personal information about their children, including identification numbers and passwords to gain access.
Funded through a buildings and technology capital levy approved by Seattle voters, the service will eventually be available in multiple languages. The district will also provide training to students, staff and parents on the system and is setting up computer kiosks in schools to accommodate families without home computers. Public libraries across Seattle also provide free Internet access.
