I had dinner with family friends this week and the conversation turned to education. Their daughter is 11 and the parents are very involved in her schooling. It was really interesting to me to hear a mother's perspective on 'hot topics' right now. She voiced:
- Frustration with having extra studying specifically for standardized tests... shouldn't they be learning what's on the test in their regular curriculum??
- Concern for which high school her daughter will attend. Due to a lack of limited 'good' high schools in Chicago Public Schools, they're already looking into private schools. Also, isn't it unfair how they don't allot more spaces to their district for the selective enrollment schools?
- Frustration with how teacher tenure works - there is a teacher at their school that everyone knows is not a good teacher. He doesn't assign homework, doesn't grade, and the parents who have a child in his class even feel pressure to teach them things at home that they're not learning at school! Why should this teacher get to keep teaching when he's ineffective?
- Lower standards and less pride in work than when she went to school. For example, her daughter's friends will turn in work with poor handwriting, incorrect capitalization, or dirty food, and when asked, respond "my teacher doesn't care."
- Doubt that they're learning as much as they should be. She mentioned all the studying she had to do early in her schooling in Peru, a visiting child from China who called her year in U.S. schools a 'vacation,' and being unsatisfied with the fact that so many teachers shy away from 'memorization.'
- Finally, uncertainty as to where the blame belongs. Is it the teachers? Administration? School district? Society? Isn't this the golden question.
Wow. That's quite a list of things to be concerned about as a parent. It's a reminder that all the issues that schools and districts are dealing with do affect parents daily lives in a very real way. I feel like their voice is the least heard, they are looped in the least about how and why things work, and it shouldn't be that way.
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