I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to teachers about their experiences with online grade books like Schoology and Infinite Campus, and many of their anecdotes were similar to what Miller shared: anxious kids checking their grades throughout the day, snowplow parents berating their children and questioning teachers about every grade they considered unacceptable, and harried middle and high school teachers, some of whom teach more than 100 kids on a given day, dealing with an untenable stream of additional communication.
Mitch Foss, who was a classroom teacher in Colorado for 19 years, told me that when he posted grades, he would hear from kids almost instantly via email or text. Sometimes they’d be waiting outside his classroom door to talk about their scores. “You might get emails from parents questioning the grade, wanting an explanation, and that’s for every single thing,” even assignments that had little bearing on students’ overall marks, “which can be overwhelming.”
This sounds like the Hell that would be designed specifically for me.