My school recently had open house and I told a number of parents that their children were not reaching their full potential and the parents did a wonderful thing….they acted.
One mother pulled her son off of the football team so he can spend more time studying.
Another mother took her daughter’s cell phone away indefinitely and now makes her study every night.
Finally, a third mother found an old Algebra book and made her son do some extra studying.
Each one of these students came to my class the next day and aced my quiz. Accountability was shared and we were all successful.
My repeater’s parent pledged to make the child study but the child came to me the next day and said that the parent would not enforce the new studying rules until next week. The repeater subsequently failed my quiz. And is still failing the class.
I also had a meeting with my Principal in which I was to discuss my goals for the upcoming year. I brought my test data and identified those students who I felt might struggle and offered a plan for remediation. When I teach, I teach for relative growth for the student since so many of my kids comes to me lacking so many basic skills. That, however, wasn’t enough. She wanted to know exactly what percentage of students I was going to get to pass the state exams.
Essentially, I refused to answer the question and instead deferred to finding out what percentage she wanted to pass and I agreed to do my best to make that happen.
I always hate questions like that because in most cases, I am the only stakeholder in the mix that is directly contributing to the success on those exams. I can teach to the standards and create a number of learning opportunities for the students but I cant make them study or care. Only their parents can do that.
In years past my students didn’t seem to care and I got very little support from the parents. Unfortunately, this is the reality in many “urban” ( there’s that word again) districts. Not surprisingly, test scores usually suck in districts like mine because of the lack of involvement and the classroom teachers are expected to turn water into wine.
When everyone ( or at least more than half of all stakeholders ) carry their fair share of the load, success comes to us all. When one group of stakeholders is expected to carry the entire load, well, then you get results like my repeater.
(By the way, the day’s average for my quiz hovered in the low 80′s and high 70′s. We should have open house once a week! )
