<p>Subject line sums it up. Dinner table conversation indicated I should be allowed to see my student’s grades, but I think the college made it clear student had to allow me to see grades. Please help me understand. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>My understanding from my undergrad days is that parents can only view student grades if the student signs a consent form allowing it.</p>
<p>I had my daughter give me her username & password.</p>
<p>If the school uses some kind of online course management (ANGEL, Blackboard, etc.) the student can give you access passwords. Otherwise, you don’t have the right to student’s grades or records.</p>
<p>I just asked my kids, and they told me. </p>
<p>Why does it have to be more complicated than that?</p>
<p>Username/password. Understand that there will probably not be weekly/monthly grades like high school. If you’re lucky, you’ll get midterm grades. You will be able to see final grades and progress toward degree evaluation.</p>
<p>Of course, if you’re really lucky, your kid will communicate with you throughout the semester and you’ll already know how things are going. :)</p>
<p>I think different schools do it differently. DS has an online portal for all academic and financial transactions with the school. When he was signing up for this before starting freshman year, he OK’ed access to his grades/courses and financial information for us. I have my own ‘authorized’ person sign-in to access this info. It’s helpful in terms of making sure all financial docs are in/complete for aid/loans, viewing statements etc as the school does not send out anything on paper. It also lets me into see his unofficial transcript, courses signed up for, credits granted etc. </p>
<p>After freshman year, we rarely talk about his grades during the semester. He will tell me some of his final grades (esp when proud/disappointed) but otherwise I see them online.</p>
<p>I get seperating from your child so they can gain independance but I will never understand parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars each year without laying down the ground rules prior to investing their child’s education. Our ground rules…we have grade user name and password to see grades when we feel like it. It doesn’t mean you have to micro mange them, it just means you know.</p>
<p>The only grades posted online for our kids were the grades at the end of each term. Our deal was they showed us those grades or we would NOT pay the tuition bill. </p>
<p>We also had our kids give us access
to the bursar’s account info. We were clear that without that access, they would be on their own with any billing issues. They agreed to that also.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I will ask about the userid and password for grades and finances, but I think it’s up to the student to give you access, correct? I don’t anticipate any problem, but a relative of mine was insistent that parents could see grades, and I think student has to set it up, if they choose to.</p>
<p>1214-we made a simple deal with our kids. Go to the registrar’s office and fill out whatever form was necessary to send grades home at the end of each semester or pay your own tuition bill. Not that they wouldn’t have told us, but this seemed like a simple solution.</p>
<p>You are correct, the student has to give permission for you to speak to anyone regarding financial aid, get email alerts re charges on their account, and have access to make payments. We have username and passwords, however there was never any ‘you must or we won’t…’. It just made sense. We have never accessed his grades online. He tells us how he’s doing throughout the semester, and at the end of term he tells us his grades. If we didn’t trust him to tell us we wouldn’t be spending this much in the first place.</p>
<p>According to my BIL who is a lawyer, as long as the student is your dependant, the school can allow you to see their grades. According to him, some schools insist that the student must give permission, but it’s not a requirement. Of course, he had a kid that flunked out of college and it took them months to find out. Their daughter now attends a school that gives them full access. So much so that my sister called one of her professors once to see how she was doing and he told her!!</p>
<p>We just asked ours and they told us. Never a problem</p>
<p>Under FERPA a school can give you student’s academic record and can even speak with you as long as the student is still a dependent and you are paying for his tuition. You can google it and it is stated on the .gov site.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At DS1’s school this is against the honor code. Parents are given separate logins that allow us to see grades and pay bills, but the kids promise not to provide their passwords to anyone.</p>
<p>A friend of mine was recently caught logging into her son’s account. They detected that the kid logged in twice from two different cities within some time period. I like this rule - it keeps parents from helping the kids register for classes and from snooping into their email.</p>
<p>My ex had access to the financials for our D, but not grades. She kept us informed, though. I think we’ve got to give our adult kids a measure of responsibility and trust or the message is that we think they AREN’T mature enough to manage their own lives. If my kid had issues with blowing off classes, not taking school seriously or being dishonest, my answer would be different, BUT, as blueiguana says, if THAT was a problem, I’m not sure they’d be college ready.</p>
<p>As a manager, I have the right to see my staff’s work to make sure they are actually working and it is of good quality. No different than with my kids - I am paying and I have the right to see the result (their grades). If their grades do not meet a certain standard, then I have the right not to continue to fund a losing venture.</p>
<p>Would you not ever check up on your employees’ work because it would mean you didn’t trust them or they are not adults?</p>
<p>But you trust and expect that your employees will do their jobs well, yes? Surely you don’t review everything they complete before sending it out, making it public, etc.? I don’t have employees, but my EMPLOYER trusts me to do my work without her looking over my shoulder. I just ran the office alone all summer and I was trusted to get the end product out acceptably. If I can’t assume my kids will due their due diligence in college they don’t belong there.</p>
<p>So how do you know if your kid is doing a good job?</p>
<p>No, I can’t afford to let my employees do what they want without milestone check up. It’s irresponsible of a manager to only look at end product, sometimes it may be too late. It’s part of risk management.</p>
<p>You may not check if your student is doing his homework or going to classes, but it is perfectly reasonable to see how the student is doing after midterm, especially when he is a new college student. But over time, once the student is on track, I may only want to see his semester grade. That’s what I would normally do with my employees - check up on new employees more frequently, then less once I am comfortable with his performance. But I would never assume he would do a good job just because we hired him.</p>
<p>I imagine it varies from job to job. My H’s job allows him a fair amount of autonomy. In fact, HIS manager recently check with HIM on what approach he thought best. Most of the time he is the final stop in material that goes out. The director is more the guy who makes sure all the cogs in the wheel are working ok, to oil the rough spots, not hand-turn each cog. </p>
<p>Some jobs allow for the employees to do their work and have the manager do a final check, not micro-manage them. It seems like your business is not like that.</p>
<p>Remember that colleges did not until recently even have online, 24/7 grade-checking options. My parents didn’t know my grades unless I told them, if I could find a phone to call with. Somehow students weren’t failing out right and left without being micromanaged.</p>
<p>If your kid isn’t being honest with you for fear of failure, or just general dishonesty or they’re depressed or they’re partying it up-the problem isn’t grades at all, it’s what’s CAUSING the bad grades and the lack of contact would be the tip off, not the grade-checking.</p>