Tag Archive for 'Parents'

Blaming Parents

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 30, 2008 in Educational Policy and Teaching. 5 Comments

Parents’ failure to impose moral values in the home has left many children out of control, with teachers now expected to effectively raise young people themselves.  So says the head of Voice, Britain’s teachers’ union. Philip Parkin says the standard of parenting skills in the UK had suffered from a downward spiral in the last 15 years as generations of poor parents succeed each other.  In a speech to the union’s annual conference, Parkin said long working hours and the decline in old-fashioned family structures has contributed to the problem. 

“Schools are being required to take on more and more of the responsibilities that rightly belong to parents; and to provide more of the stability in children’s lives which should be provided by families. There is also the perception that, in general, the skills of parents are declining as one generation succeeds another.”

“In my last 10 or 15 years in school I saw a significant decline in parenting standards.” Parkin added. ”The shortening of many relationships, the creation of more step-families, the emphasis on parents going out to work and the consequent perception of the reduced worth of the full-time parent have all changed the way we behave and the character of childhood.”

I could be very wrong, but it’s hard to imagine such a naked critique of “parenting standards” issuing from a responsible U.S. union leader.  For all the sturm und drang in the U.S. about accountability and overcoming societal ills, it says something about the overarching consensus on what schools ought to be able to do that these comments sound so, well, foreign.

Teenage Waistline

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 21, 2008 in Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Kids who were averaging three hours of moderate to vigorous activity when they were 9 barely manage to get more than a half-hour of daily exercise by the time they reach 15, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  “Kids’ activity is decreasing dramatically between 9 and 15,” said study author Dr. Philip Nader, of UC San Diego, who points to several factors behind the shift.

  • Loss of phys ed and recess in schools.
  • Fewer open spaces and parks
  • Changes in the way kids live

“Kids used to just run around and ride their bikes everywhere, and kids used to walk to school. Now, parents drive them,” Nader noted.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 30, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Parents. 0 Comments

I’m all about committed parenting, academic rigor and student achievement so why does it feel excessive to me that children as young as four are being tutored to get ahead in school? The Houston Chronicle reports some parents are hiring tutors, “because they’re feeling the pressure of looming high-stakes tests, which begins in Texas with the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills for third-grade children. Others are thinking about college.”

Houston-area tutors work with hundreds of young children on phonics, numbers, colors, study skills and fine motor skills. Some take children as young as 3 1/2 . But some caution that putting pressure on young children might give them a distaste for school. Rather than spending upward of $45 an hour on private tutors, they say parents should use outings to stores, libraries and museums as teaching moments.

“A child needs summer,” Kay Hall, director of the Early Learning Academy in the Spring school district tells the paper.  ”There’s a lot of learning that can take place over the summer, but it doesn’t need to be in a classroom in a structured environment.”

What It Takes: Mentors, Motivation, Moxie and Moms

Published by Leanna Landsmann on June 24, 2008 in Education Leadership, Parents and Students. 2 Comments

Every June we’re treated to cap and gowned seniors en route to their high-school graduations, proud families in tow. We smile and give them a ‘thumbs up.’ But we must also pause to see the drop outs as clearly as the graduates.

How did these students persevere when so many with so much more fail? What’s in their secret sauce? Can it be bottled for others?

One million students drop out of high school each year. The literature is packed with reasons: poverty, lack of college-bound culture at home, poor performing schools, low expectations and high pressure to reject academic success, too few great teachers and counselors. What more can the “village” it takes to raise a child do to prevent this?

As board chair of Greatschools.net, an organization that helps parents put their kids on a path to college, I stew about this more than your average Jane. After umpteen decades of ‘school reform,’ I’m angry we’re still slogging in place.

So I look forward each March to a call asking, “Do you want to review scholarship applications again this year?” I drop everything to pour over submissions from high-achieving, low-income New York City seniors who, if chosen, will get a generous four-year free ride to college from a family foundation with a bold-face name. From several hundred applicants, three-dozen are chosen to be interviewed. From that group, the foundation selects 25.

Continue reading ‘What It Takes: Mentors, Motivation, Moxie and Moms’

Accountability Begins at Home

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 21, 2008 in Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Thoughtful heresy over at eduflack, who blogs about a new Washington Post poll on DC schools. Seven in 10 surveyed believe the District’s public schools are inadequate. Dog bites man. But more than three out of four point a finger at parents. And eduflack, bless him, has the temerity to agree.

Heresy, because to suggest that parents bear even some of the responsibility for poor school performance is to risk a charge of “blaming the victim” in many quarters. We all know that great schools and great teachers make a difference. However to insist a school can overcome all of the effects of parental disengagement or neglect is, in my experience, setting it up to unfairly be judged a failure. The Post poll shows that the consumers of education, parents, are ahead of the education establishment on this score.

“True parental involvement has mothers, fathers, grandparents, and such involved in the learning process. They know what’s happening in the classroom,” writes eduflack. “They ensure their kids are doing their homework. They identify learning experiences in the home or in the community. They take responsibility for their kids, and hold them accountable for maximizing their school hours….Many of the problems our schools face — rising drop-out rates, limited reading and math skills, truancy, etc. — can all be attributed, in part, to parent apathy.”

In my classroom, one of my best students was the daughter of an indifferent mother who had nine children with seven different fathers. One of my most difficult students was the son of a highly engaged, devoutly religious mother who worked herself to exhaustion to support her family, yet still found time to come to school whenever asked. But these were the outliers. I’m not suggesting there’s a cause and effect relationship between student achievement or classroom behavior and parental involvement. The race is not always to the swift, but it is the way to bet.

This “gut” assessment on my part is roughly validated by an under-discussed and appreciated report from ETS, The Family: America’s Smallest School, which examined child care quality, parental involvement in schools, student absences and home environments. The research identified four factors—single parent families, parents reading to young children every day, hours spent watching television, and the frequency of school absences—which “taken together, account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) eighth-grade reading scores.”

In his post, Eduflack alluded to having performed recent focus groups with eighth and ninth graders on dropping out. “Student after student said they wouldn’t drop out because their parents won’t let them,” he noted. Presumably this was done on behalf of one of his PR clients. I hope he’ll have more to say on this research as soon as he’s able. I’m intrigued.