Our school system has used Pinnacle for several years, and it has been very helpful to our family. Students and parents can access their grades online. While it doesn’t have a place for teachers to add comments (possible reasons for a bad grade or something), the schools my children attend(ed) have encouraged parent/teacher communication, and make it easy to email or call teachers.
We check on the grades every week or so; it’s not a daily thing. If we notice a downward trend we talk to our child and find out what’s up. Sometimes we talk to the teacher(s) involved, too, depending on the situation. Depending on the reasons for the bad grades, the kid might need extra help, or might need a serious talking to and their electronic privileges removed until they bring their grades up. Catching it quickly, while there’s still time to turn it around, is far preferable to having no clue until halfway through the term, when interim reports are issued.
I see your point about parents who obsess and go crazy over a single bad grade, and it is troublesome. I feel like those parents would probably know anyway, though…they’d just use some other method to find out. I’ve known parents in the pre-Pinnacle days who made a sort of ‘contract’ with the teacher(s), so that they’d be informed of every assignment and could follow up with their kids, insisting on seeing completed work/grades. Some of these deals even required signatures. Sadly, where there’s a will to be an ass, there’s a way!