Progress Report Manager Help

What is the Progress Report Manager?

First some background on what a traditional Progress Report is. When students start struggling in the classroom, many schools turn to Progress Reports to help put things back on track. In most schools, Progress Reports are no more than slips paper. The student carries this slip of paper from class to class and says, "Hey Mrs. Hathaway, can you write how I did this week so my parents know I'm doing my homework?" The teacher writes a few notes, guesses a grade for the week and gives it back to the student. The flaws in this system are obvious. Disorganized or dishonest students misplace theses slip of paper either by accident or on purpose. Overburdened teachers struggle to write whatever they can but rarely have time to sit and look at grade books before the bell rings. Administrators have no way of tracking actual progress by reading the reports and comparing them week to week. All of this leaves parents in the dark more than they already are.

The Progress Report Manager was built to alleviate these problems. Using the Internet, administrators create Progress Reports that are automatically sent via email. Every week, teachers receive a message in their inbox reminding them that a new Progress Report has been created. The teacher completes the Progress Reports online using a web browser. At the end of the week, the administrators click a button which sends email messages to every parent whose child received a report. The parents can look at their students progress online and reply to teacher comments using response features.

How do parents use it?

Parents use the Progress Report System by clicking on a link that will appear in their inbox. The link for parents uses the following format:

http:// school website address /p.php?c=SHC2H58MK

This is the only way that parents can login to the system. It is important that this code stay secure, and that the parent adjust their browser settings to protect their child's privacy in case other people use their computer. Once the parent has accessed the system, they will see a web page showing the student's Progress Reports for that week.

Viewing Reports

To view a report, click the [View Report] link that appears next to the student's name. This will expand the page downwards to show the information that each teacher entered into the system:

As seen in the graphic above, the parent can view the teacher's comments and also respond to the teacher by writing in the textbox and clicking the Save Comments button. Once these comments are saved they cannot be changed.

Looking at Older Reports

Parents can look at previous reports by using the Change Report View drop-down box and clicking the go button. This will refresh the page and display all of the reports for the student for the current school year. To help keep the database size reasonable, reports from previous years are archived and not available to parents once a new school year has commenced.

Being Realistic

Remember that Progress Reports are one alternative among many in helping your child. Progress Reports should not be used for a lengthy period of time by any one student. If progress occurs after a few weeks, the system has done its job. If no progress is seen, the Progress Report System is proving itself to be an inferior method of helping students stay focused. Tutoring, counseling and other strategies must be considered.

How do teachers use it?

Teachers use the Progress Report System by clicking on a link that will appear in their inbox. The link for teachers uses the following format:

http:// school website address /t.php?c=SHC2H58MK

This is the only way that teachers can login to the system unless they have administrator privelages - see How do administrators use the system? for more information.. It is important that this code stay secure, and that the teacher adjust their browser settings to protect the privacy of their students in case someone else uses their computer. Once the teacher has accessed the system, they will see a web page showing their Progress Reports for that week.

Select the appropriate behavior and assignment settings for each student in the list and write comments that will be helpful for the parent. These comments can focus on things in the classroom, but should also include questions about things that might be happening at home. You can add or edit this information using the page above until the administrator creates a new report the next week. The page shown in the screenshot above will always show the most recent report.

After saving the Progress Reports, teachers will be directed to a page where all of their reports can be viewed for each student in chronological order. This page can also be accessed by clicking the [ Click here to view older reports ] link. This link would appear above Jimmy Glick's name if the example screenshot showed more real estate.

The Progress Report page shows a list of the most recent progress reports only. To view a specific report for a student click the [View Report] link that appears next to the student's name. This will expand the page downwards to show the information that each you entered into the system. If a parent visited the system it will show the date they viewed the report and a response if they wrote one.

To see older reports, use the Change Report View drop-down box and click the go button. This will refresh the page and display all of the reports for your students during the current school year. To help keep the database size reasonable, reports from previous years are archived and not available to teachers once a new school year has commenced.

How do administrators use it?

After logging in, the administrator will see the same view as teachers except for some minor differences. Administrators see all of the reports for every student in the system. Also, administrators will see links for both editing or deleting reports. Finally, the administrator will see a link for the Admin Menu which is where the tools can be found for mopdifying reports, emails, parents, teachers, subjects, semesters and security.

The admin menu is a secure location that gives administrators the ability to maintain all aspects of the Progress Report System. The Admin Home page will show statistics for the current week and offer the menu from which all other tools can be accessed.

The statistics shown above display the number of reports that went out in the current week and how many of those reports have been viewed by parents. This is a good way to keep track of how successful the system is based on the number of parents that are actually using it.

To add, edit or delete semesters, use the Semesters link. This is the very first thing that an administrator will have to do before using the system. In fact, the system will not operate until this has been accomplished. See Installation and configuration for more details.When adding semesters, make sure you do not overlap dates. The first semester must start and end before the second one begins.

To add, edit or delete subjects, use the Subjects link. Subjects refer to disciplines like like Math, English, French, History, Science etc. When you add or modify a teacher, you connect these subjects with the teachers who teach them.

To modify grade years, use the Grades link. Select the lowest and highest grade that your school comprises. For a middle school you might select 6 as the lowest and 8 as the highest depending on your location. Note that there is no kindergarten option... I am not sure why the system would be used earlier than middle school anyhow.

To add, edit or delete teachers, use the Teachers link. It is very important that you click the subject boxes for each teacher to indicate the teacher's discipline. If you forget to do this, it will not be possible to assign students to a teacher's course. Avoid having to go back and forth from the teachers page to the students page by entering teachers first. By giving a teacher a password you are making that teacher an administrator. If you do not want to give the teacher access to the admin menu, leave the password field blank.

To add, edit or delete students, use the Students link. It is very important that you click the subject drop-down boxes for each class in which the student is enrolled. Scroll down to see the list of students with links for editing and deleting each one. When you delete a student, all of the student's progress reports will also be deleted.

At the very bottom of the students page shown above, there is a button that states Click Here to Graduate Students. Be careful when you press this button, it should only be used once a year. If you click it by accident, a warning will appear asking if you want to cancel. If you decide to proceed with graduating the students, the following tasks will be performed:

1) All of the students in the highest grade will be deleted.
2) All of the younger students will advance a year - their grade level will increase by one.
3) All of the Progress Reports in the system will be archived along with all student information.
4) All of the Progress Reports in the system will be removed from the database.

See why you need to be careful? None of the reports will be in the database after you graduate the students. For your reference, an Excel spreadsheet is created that contains all of the student information and reports for a whole year. This report is available in the Reports Home page. Before we explain this, please glance at the familiar drop down list below:

This drop down list is found on the Reports Home page and gives administrators, parents and teachers the ability to look at older reports (see the parents or teacher section for more information. For administrators, this drop down list will also include all of the archived reports. In other words, after you click on the graduate button, an Excel spreadsheet is created and saved. The archived report (Excel spreadsheets) appears at the bottom of the selection list shown above. The date of the report is based on the day the archive was created, not the date of graduation. Teachers and parents do not have access to these reports.

To edit the email templates used for sending report links to parents and teachers use the Edit Emails link. The examples below should give you an idea of what to write. Notice that the link the teachers and parents receive will appear below the message once it arrives in their inbox.

To send emails to teachers or parents click the Send Reports link. Usually administrators use this page twice in one week. They send the reports to teachers on a Monday so that they can complete the report based on the previous week's events. After giving the teachers a week to fill it out, they send it to parents on a Friday. The parents write their comments over the weekend or on Monday so that the teacher can review the parent's responses when the new batch of reports are sent. This schedule might be different than the one for your school.

.The checkboxes next to each student give you the option of skipping or including a student for that week. If the checkbox is checked, a report will be created and sent to the teacher. If it is not checked, it will not be created nor sent to the teacher.

If a box was not checked when it was sent to teachers, but is checked when you send it to parents, the system will ignore the attempt - nothing will be sent. To stop sending students reports for an indefinite period of time, click the Students link on the Admin menu and edit the student. Check the "Stop sending reports" checkbox for that student. This will take the student out of the send lists for teachers and parents.

When you click the send reports to teachers button you are doing more than sending teachers reports. You are also Creating new reports. This means that the link sent to the teachers from the previous week will now reflect a new list of students.

To see if there have been any attempts to hack into the system, use the Hack Alerts link. This link will show you if a certain IP address is attempting to gain access to the system by guessing multiple passwords within a twenty second time frame. A few listings should not be concerning to you - this could be explained by a parent clicking a mangled link in their email or by an admin mistyping their password. But if many attempts were made within a short period of time, it means that someone is attempting to hack into the system. The Hack Alerts will look like this:

If a listing like this occurs more than a few times within a few minutes, talk to your system administrator about blocking the IP address of that user. It is relatively easy to do using a file called .htaccess. Googling something like "blocking IP address .htaccess" yields plenty of informative literature.

To prevent users from guessing passwords and codes over and over again, there is a 20 second delay message that appears when a second attempt has been made. No attempt to login can be made during this twenty second period. The message looks as follows:

Installation and Configuration

- PHP version 4.1.0 or later
- MySQL 3.2.0 or later
- Shell access / FTP access to your server

1) Download the .zip file from sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/prm
2) Use FTP to upload this file to your server
3) Unzip the file in your web root
4) Using your database utility of choice, create a new MySQL database. You can name it whatever you wish.
5) Run the installation by loading http:// (your web server) / (prm directory if any) / index.php

How do I protect student privacy?

The Progress Report Manager uses codes to give teachers and parents access. These codes use the following format as already stated:

This method of access is used because it is simple and fast. Most browsers will remember these codes in the history list of visited websites. For instance, in Microsoft Internet Explorer - you can view some of the websites visited by clicking the address list at the top of the window.

If someone else uses the parent or teacher's computer, it would be easy to see the code used to grant access and write it down.To protect student privacy, it is recommended that parents and teachers adjust the browser settings so that web addresses are not stored in the historical list of websites. Adjusting these settings is different for every browser.

For Internet Explorer navigate to Tools > Internet Options and look at the History section of the window. Choose 0 days to keep pages in history.

For Mozilla Firefox and Netscapoe navigate to Tools > Options and look at the History section of the privacy window. Choose 0 days to remember visited pages.

For Safari you can either clear the history after every visit or follow this more elaborate and technical solution: Create a New file from TextEdit. Just type a word or two in the file. Name the file History.plist. Quit, then press Command-I on the file and change Permissions to No Access. Then replace the History.plist file in user > library > safari. This may seem like a strange way of shutting off the history, because it is... Safari does not do this without tricking it by locking a dummy file with the same name as its history file.