Does anyone proofread student comments before they go out on report cards? If so, what is your procedure for doing so? We're considering going to the default comments that can be created in Education Edge to get over this hurdle. We've been entering comments in Filemaker Pro, because it's easy to proofread them there before importing them into EE. Also, has anyone experienced their comments being chopped off, or lost after importing them to EE? Ideas? thanks. [i]--- Edited at 11/2/2007 3:08:12 PM by Jonathan Corley[/i]

Our Lower School teachers are supposed to pair up and proofread each other's before they are posted, our Middle School is responsible for proofreading their own and our Upper School has the Lead Advisor for each grade level proofread the comments for their grade level on printed reports and pass any that need correcting back to the teachers. The teachers then have 24 hours to correct their mistakes before their comments are reposted and then the report cards are reprinted and mailed. We cannot go to canned comments because parents consistently rate personalized comments on formal reports as highly desireable and helpful on our annual Community survey. It's never easy, but we've figured out some ways of spreading around the work.

Jonathan- Contact me at [Email Removed] and I will go over our procedure with you. Scott Schaffer IT Manager/BlackBaud Specialist Heschel Day School

Some of our administrators proofread the report cards for errors in spelling and grammar. To lessen the likelihood of an overlooked mistake, I set up a query to send all the comments to Excel, where I can run a spell check. Still, long comments get truncated, so we can't totally depend on it. We were going to switch to numbered comments only, but had a technical glitch, so we're pushing it back to next year. If there's a better way of dealing with freeform comments, I'd love to know!

As proof-reading material we printed student progress reports from FA Web. The reports were reviewed and then suggested changes we made. There was a deadline to make the changes and then grades and comments were posted and printed. ~Rachel Rachel Welsh Webmaster The Shipley School [Email Removed]

At our school we write a generic comment followed by an individual/personal comment for each student. In the Middle School, faculty e-mail their generic comments to the administrators for approval before entering them in FAWeb. The personal comments are entered directly in FAWeb. Administrators then proofread in an in-house program written by one our faculty and only go into EducationEdge if they have to fix a grammatical error/typo in a comment. In the past, they used to read comments in EducationEdge but there were too many steps involved within EE to move from one student to the next in the grade module.

Marita, That's about what we do. Would you be willing to share the program that you use for Administrators to proofread? Right now our administrators go into each teacher's FAWeb account and read them there. Marilyn Mossman Director of Technology Hillel Day School

Once the deadline for having grades and comments in has been reached, I transfer from FAWEB to EE7, changing the status back to "Not Ready." Then I use the Reports module to print a bare-bones set of grades/comments--no logo, address, bells or whistles--organized by teacher name. Administrators split them up and skim them that night. Because they are printed by teacher name, it's easy to put the proofread sheets into teacher mailboxes the next morning. Everyone has to check his/her mailbox and make changes by noon, changing the posting status back to "Ready." Then I update the grades/comments in EE and tell the person responsible for printing and mailing report cards to go ahead.

Wow! I'm impressed with what you all do. With 900+ students who mostly take 8 courses, that's over 7300 comments. Needless to say, we don't proofread them. But it's a good thing if you can. Anthony Celentano Director of Academic Computing Services Pope John XXIII High School Sparta NJ 07871 973-729-6125 x253 [Email Removed]

We also proofread using the buddy method and then form masters proof them again and then there's a final one by division directors. Editing is done by the person doing the proofing - teachers log in as each other and make corrections in FAWeb Barbara Prine Systems Manager Kingswood-Oxford School