From student assessments and educational resources to school notifications and two-way communication with teachers, CTLS Parent is a one-stop-shop for parents to monitor student progress and stay connected to Cobb Schools.
Parents can access the parent portal on the CTLS website. The new tool is also available for parents to download in the App Store and is also available for download via Google Play.
“The classroom gets more complicated for students, parents, and teachers every year. It doesn’t have to be. The Cobb Teaching and Learning System is designed to give students better resources, parents more information, and teachers more time,” said Cobb Schools Superintendent Chris Ragsdale.
The goal of CTLS Parent is to make it easier for Cobb families to partner with Cobb teachers and schools whether during digital learning or when students return to face-to-face learning.
Parents can log in using the same information that they have used to log into ParentVue. If parents have a problem logging in, we suggest resetting your ParentVue password which they may have forgotten or are entering incorrectly.
When parents download or access CTLS Parent for the first time, they will login to their new home for all communication from their teacher(s), their school, and the District. Additional features including access to student grades, attendance, assessments, and educational resources to support learning, are being added throughout the fall of 2020.
For Assessments, CTLS Parent will keep parents in the loop on what their students know and the progress they have made over their school career. The assessment section will show End of Grade (EOG) and End of Course (EOC) assessments, Reading Inventory, and PSAT results. Each assessment will provide further information and a comprehensive breakdown, so parents understand their student’s results. It will include a history of each assessment they have taken. Because parents will have a record of every assessment their child has taken, parents will be able to see academic growth and progress.
The one-stop-shop features of the CTLS platform also provides multiple ways to stay connected with schools and teachers. Parents will have the option to message their student’s teachers and track messages from their school. Parents will no longer have to hunt through their emails to find a message from their child’s school. All the messages will be saved in a centralized location on the app.
The same goes for Districtwide messages and alerts. Parents will also be able to set up push notifications, select language preferences, and indicate the frequency in which they would like to receive messages.
Parents will also be able to access a directory of teachers and important contact information for the school in one location. They’ll even have the option to add the contact numbers from the directory to their phone contacts, so they easily know who is calling them.
Elsewhere in the app, the parents will be able to access over 700,000 vetted and aligned educational resources. The Resource Library will help families stay engaged in their child’s learning at home. 
Other app features include student schedule, grade book, report card, mass notifications, calendars, conferences automated attendance, lunch balance notifications, polls, school signups, and more.
The student schedule section will not only provide a list of student classes, but also a list of standards for each class and grade level. This will help parents stay informed of expected academic progress.
Cobb teachers are rapidly planning for the start of the school year and part of their pre-planning has included learning all the new features that CTLS provides teachers, parents, and students.
Read some of what the educators have to say about the CTLS platform on social media:
“Cobb parents, you need to know this: The Cobb Schools central office folks have assembled an incredible professional development program around online teaching, and teachers have been given three solid weeks to immerse themselves in it.”
“I’m so thankful to teach in Cobb! The online platform they have created for students to learn from is fantastic. I’m excited to create engaging lessons that will get my chorus students singing again!”
“Thank you to [Cobb Schools] and any other amazing Cobb employee who worked hard for the last 4 months to create this amazing CTLS digital platform to help us all be the best we can be! One Team, One Goal, Student Success!”
“I am enjoying building my digital lessons on CTLS. Can’t wait to see it in action.”
“Our superintendent is right! CTLS is better than any other resource I’ve seen in any other school district.”
“Thank you [Cobb Schools] for an awesome week of CTLS training! As a teacher, I feel much more confident and as a parent, I am excited about the digital learning opportunities our kids will have.”
This article originally appeared in the August issue. You can access the digital August edition HERE.
