ClassTag Bridges the Technological Divide to Engage 100% of Parents

ClassTag supports personalized communications with all parents, whether they have a smartphone, a cell phone or are entirely offline.

ClassTag, a free parent engagement app for teachers and schools, announces it has integrated printing to its intelligent multi-channel communication suite to support reaching all parents wherever they are. Supporting the web, mobile app, SMS and printed messages for children’s backpacks, ClassTag gives teachers a simple, one-step process for ensuring that each parent gets important classroom information in the format they prefer. ClassTag is the first service to support personalized, meaningful, two-way communication with all parents regardless of what devices they use, even if they are entirely offline.

While technology has helped improve communications inside classrooms, a lack of technology adoption is creating roadblocks for many families. Today, 13% of U.S. adults do not use the internet, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. In rural areas, the technological divide is, even more, striking with 39% of Americans without advanced services that enable users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video, according to Federal Communications Commission.

Despite the rapid increase in schools’ adoption of technology to communicate with parents, many teachers still struggle with parent engagement. ClassTag’s survey of teachers found that a majority of teachers (53%) reported feeling “sad” or “frustrated” by the lack of parent engagement in their classrooms.

Some of this disconnection may be caused by poor communication systems, including inaccurate contact information, lack of internet access, language barriers, or just an overwhelming amount of information coming from schools to busy parents. According to Education Week, parents’ usage of various tools remains unsatisfactory, particularly in Title 1 schools and other communities with limited access to a cell phone or computer.

ClassTag is the only application addressing the real reasons behind the lack of engagement from the ground up. The groundbreaking innovation lies in dissecting key breaking points in parent engagement and bridging the gap between online and offline communications.

“Adding more apps to the mix won’t work because we simply don’t have 100% internet penetration. If we rely on email and websites alone, we are accepting that someone will be left out,” explains Vlada Lotkina, ClassTag CEO. “Our solution is an all-in-one platform for managing everything from contact accuracy to identifying the gaps in parent engagement and proactively managing them, across online and offline communication channels.”

ClassTag’s new feature gives teachers smart, actionable alerts and recommendations. If a family isn’t being reached via email or mobile app, the chatbot-inspired assistant will recommend printing a personalized paper copy of announcements, reminders, and schedules to be sent home in children’ backpacks to those harder-to-reach parents. ClassTag intelligently produces personalized communication with each and every parent, no matter what their preferred communication channel.

Reaching non-English speaking parents will also become much easier thanks to new translation functionality to be released later this summer. As Danielle Fugazzi, a kindergarten teacher, puts it: “My main challenge is to reach all parents and get them to respond. Too often teachers engage the same families over and over, but those that need this connection the most seem to be missing out. ClassTag understood the very heart of the issue and giving me the opportunity to confidently reach all families and print out the personalized newsletters and announcements for parents who aren’t online or who don’t regularly read their emails.”

“We developed this functionality based on our users’ feedback to help them with the everyday struggles every teacher faces. ClassTag now acts like an assistant who spots missing connections and automatically provides actionable recommendations, taking the guesswork out of engagement and making the mission of reaching 100% of parents possible,” says Lotkina.

Meet ClassTag at ISTE 2017!

Coming to ISTE this year? Don’t miss our team. Visit ClassTag at booth 664 to connect with teachers and school leaders who achieved amazing success and transformed communications in their schools. Get personalized recommendations and set yourself up for parent communication success in the next school year.