Electronic Gradebooks and Student Honesty

I just had to share this.

I work with several schools systems and many of those systems use electronic gradebooks. These allow parents and students have real-time access to changes teachers make in their gradebooks. Many e-Gradebooks have a private feature where grades are not visible as well as a publish/public feature which makes grades visible to students and parents. Most teachers keep grades visible (published) as sometimes students and parents may complain if the teachers forget to publish grades for work that has been submitted and many administrators required teachers to maintain public visibility to avoid the challenges of dealing with parents, students, and un-published grades.

The story: Got a call from a school that a student claimed to have screenshot evidence that he had received a grade for an assignment but the grade was later removed by the teacher and he did not think that was fair. I asked the administrator calling to be specific about the student's language. Did the student say that he received a grade for work he submitted or did he at any time say he had submitted the work? The administrator thought that was a strange question but went back to the student's email which did not indicate anywhere that he had submitted the work, only that a grade had been assigned to the work by the teacher and that he had a screenshot of the grade.

So I did my research and indeed the teacher did accidentally assign a grade but when the teacher realized he had put the grade in the wrong row, next to the wrong student name, he removed the grade. However, while the grade was in the grade-book the student happened to see it and took a screenshot because he thought that screenshot might have utility.

The student was 'honest.' Having never claimed to have actually done the work the student was amenable to the fact that he did not do the work and that it was the right thing to remove the grade. Let me say that I have know students who would have fought to the mat for their right to the grade that they saw because it was a 'published' grade.

Moral of the story: Luckily most students and parents tend to be reasonably honest and amenable to reason. However, rather than maintaining public visibility for grades I ALWAYS recommend that teachers keep grades on PRIVATE until they are sure they want to publish those grades. It can save a lot of heartache as not all students and parents are necessarily always amenable to reason.

Just sharing.