The electronic report card – instituted last year at Lewiston High School and Lewiston Middle School – will become common throughout the school district within the next few years.

The system enables parents and students to monitor academic progress at any time rather than wait for a quarterly report card. Parents can access a parent portal that allows them to see how their children are doing at any time. For students, electronic reporting helps them to follow their grades and set goals to ensure that all work has been completed and recorded.

This year, teachers in Grades 5 and 6 have been training to use a similar system at the elementary level, and an electronic system will be ready in the fall for those grades. It will allow parents to access it using PowerSchool, the school department’s student information system. Parents will be able to check student grades in reading, writing, math, science/health, and social studies. Also included in the report will be attendance data, a conduct grade, and quarterly reports in art, music, physical education and technology.

Training for teachers in Grades 3 and 4 will begin during the next school year, with a goal of implementing the electronic report cards in fall 2010. The design likely will be similar to that of the Grades 5 and 6 report cards. Teachers and administrators will also begin to examine different designs for a report card for kindergarten through second grade. Because instructional expectations and curricula in the primary grades differs from the intermediate level, an electronic reporting system at that level will have a different format, requiring many hours of investigation and planning with a goal for implementation in fall 2011.

In addition to providing timely information to parents, electronic reporting systems will allow the school department to easily access student achievement, attendance and mobility data.