Federal Way Public Schools will launch a new website for parents to view and track their student’s progress starting next week.

The new site (fwps.globalscholar.com) allows for real-time updating. The district hopes the site will foster understanding between students, parents and teachers on how standards are being met. The district is sending letters with login information and some tutorial on how to use the site.

Dave Davis, director of assessment and accountability, gave a brief presentation to the Federal Way School Board on Oct. 11. He showed off new features of the system the district calls Go2.

“The three critical elements of this first version of Go2 were focused on attendance, assignments and (student) progress,” Davis said, navigating through the website before the board and audience members. “You can see here, there are the class schedules, (if) the parent clicks on grades, it takes them to grades. There’s a comprehensive view of their grades, as well as upcoming assessment and some of those things that have already been assessed.”

If a parent is curious about a particular assessment, they can click on it, see the date it was given, and how much “weight” it has regarding a student’s overall grade.

Because the system itself is new, and because the school year is also relatively new, Davis said that once parents are able to access the site, they will see a lot of “in progress.” This is because the first round of report cards aren’t set to be released until November.

“Our goal in our first version was to clearly identify attendance concerns, assignments, upcoming assignments and their current progress,” Davis said. “We have seen an increase in teachers putting that stuff in there on a regular basis.”

Davis also shared that students and teachers will have their own “portals” to access the system.

Multiple languages

With Federal Way schools having 113 “first” languages spoken, school board member Angela Griffin asked Davis and Dr. Josh Garcia, assistant superintendent of teaching for learning, whether there are plans for Go2 to suit non-English speaking families.

“Our first priority on that is to have multiple languages with our report cards,” Davis said.

Garcia echoed Davis’ remarks, saying the first priority is report cards in multiple languages.

“We already have a plan to translate our report cards,” Garcia said.

Board member Suzanne Smith feels parents should learn to use the site to ensure it is an effective tool.

“For parents to get the most out of things like these, you actually have to go in and use them,” she said. “We, as parents, are the ones that use this, so as users we need to let them know if it’s working for us or not. The sooner we can do that, the sooner we can make improvements.”

Go online

Learn more about it at fwps.globalscholar.com