Teaching Pt. 13

Integration of all these ideas is key to creating a robust and effective educational system. Here is one such system:

All teachers will use Gradekeeper or similar software. The benefit of using computerized grading is that software reduces the amount of work and errors incurred in calculating the student grades. In addition gradekeeper or similar software files can be uploaded to a server and the server can perform statistical analysis on each student's grades and look for negative grade trends and other factors. If negative grade trends are detected then the server alerts the instructor via email, the instructor will have a chance to reverse the trend, otherwise if it continues a school counselor will be alerted and will work with the instructor to develop strategies to reverse the grade trend.

Given that at any one time an instructor may have more than one such students, the server will be connected to the national student database, the server will suggest certain strategies to reverse the trends dependent upon profile analytics. The server will look for the most similar grade trends for past students in the most similar schools around the country, then it will look for the most effective solution. The counselor-instructor team will decide if the strategies selected will be effective for their particular situation.

Another advantage is that the server can provide contact information for the instructor or school that developed the strategy, that way they can get real time advice on how to proceed.

In addition since all grades are uploaded to a server, the server can create a webpage for each student that way both the student and the student's parents can view the grades real time. In addition, any negative grade trends will be indicated on the webpage that way the student and the parents can determine exactly where the student needs to improve.

John G.