DeansList—A New Take on the Traditional Gradebook

One of the most difficult adjustments any teacher can make in their career is to their classroom management style. Whether it’s a first-year teacher struggling to find the class culture that suits their style, or an experienced teacher facing a necessary shift in procedure, integrating ways to monitor behavior in the classroom is easy to let slide and disastrous when it does. Fortunately, new methods are being released all the time to help teachers track behavior.

DeansList, a software platform released in 2013 by an NYC company of the same name, is a new gradebook with an alternative focus. Instead of measuring academic standards and performance, the platform is designed to help teachers monitor, assess, and respond to student behavior. The software is designed to help teachers “Assess Character and Culture,” allowing them to present the idea that their attitude is as important as the grade on their papers.

Easy to Customize, Easy to Use

The platform is infinitely customizable: Individual schools work with the DeansList company to specify which parts of the program they make the most use of. If, for example, one school wants to use the platform to measure behavior standards across a grade level, while another school wants to place emphasis on tracking communication between teacher and parent, their versions of the website would look different from each other.

The platform makes it easy to record individual student behaviors according to the standards that the school holds. The base page for such recording is shown below:

Notes can then be added to help provide details if needed. With the system in place, teachers can log behavior quickly, allowing them to create a more complete picture of their student in the classroom.

The platform also provides a consistent place to log parent/teacher communication, as shown below:

These kinds of pages can include contact information for parents; for example, what are the best times or methods to reach the parent needed? The platform can log these communications, provide a place to add details, and create follow-ups with parents or other members of the staff if needed.

Unify Your Classroom

In an entire school, DeansList could be used to help create a sense of a unified classroom culture. Teachers can decide on a unified set of values that will be included on their student reports, and track a student’s ability to display those values in multiple environments. Since profiles can show behaviors across multiple classrooms, groups of teachers can then monitor trends and respond appropriately. A student’s entire behavior history can be tracked, allowing teachers to see if a student struggles with certain types of classrooms, behaviors, or student values. With this kind of unified behavior, a teacher or groups of teachers can adjust to help that student maintain a strong learning environment. An example of some of the data that can be gathered on a student is posted below:

The platform also allows teachers to send out weekly reports to parents, with a summary of their behavior for the week. A sample of such a report is linked below:

PCA ES Sample

This elementary school report shows both positive behaviors, and  and a note about what the student can do to improve their conduct in the following week. It also includes a reference to their Points Bank, which the school uses as a positive incentive allowing them to buy items at the school store. The better a student’s behavior, the more points they can earn!

Where DeansList is Headed

At this point, there is no academic component to DeansList; however, the platform can be integrated into some gradebook software. In addition, a request to the company can result in your weekly behavior reports including an estimate of the student’s academic grades. In addition, the company is currently developing a version of the HTML website that, while it is not directly an app, can be downloaded and operated like an app on mobile devices.  The company itself explains how to go through this process in the below video:

We’re very excited to see the future of DeansList, and hope that teachers and students alike will find that including it will become invaluable to creating a culture of positive behavior and enforcement across any school that uses it. If you’re interested in trying the platform out, go to deanslistsoftware.com and request a demo!