We Have The Numbers (And We’re Voting Yes)

In a stack of papers called Reform, Unorganized.

  • Feb
  • 09
  • 2006

Stumbling onto a news report of an education poll, the glaring problem of differing expectations in schools across the nation (world?) stands almost untouched. I’ll just say at the outset that I’m not sure I feel too confident in anything with AOL’s initials attached to it, especially given that this was an online poll and, as such, is representative of only a certain segment of the population attempting to be reached. The contrast of AP’s association (no pun intended) with the poll makes me willing to consider it further.

(Mis)Matching Expectations

If I am a teacher, I need to know what’s expected of me when kids show up in my room. If I am a parent, I need to know what I can expect when I send my child off to school. The AP-AOL Learning Services poll shows very clearly that teachers and parents have a fundamentally different understanding of public schools. 54% of parents see lack of student discipline as a rather minor issue, with 34% saying it’s not too serious and 20% saying it’s not at all serious. 65% of teachers see lack of student discipline as an issue that is very serious (33%) or somewhat serious (32%). That’s a radically different assessment of the situation from the two parties.

Also, note the emphasis parents place on math over English; 39% of parents think kids should spend even more time studying math in school and only 24% think kids should study English more. Why is that?

Those kinds of differences are seen across the board. Results regarding homework from the poll show similar discrepancies in perception; teachers and parents do not expect the same things from the classroom and the home, nor do they even see the same things. How did we get to a spot where teachers and parents see the problems on school campuses so differently, so much so that they each seem to be in completely different worlds?

When Do Parents Visit?

Parents come to their child’s campus on back-to-school night, to pick up their child for the day, and to take care of any untoward business that child may have gotten into. There may be occasional performances that parents attend, but most parents don’t find themselves on a school campus very often, even the school their child attends. As students move through their years of public education, there are fewer and fewer reasons for parents to visit the campus. That needs to change and schools need to work on providing for parents a clear image of what life is like on campus.

Parents Being Parents

Additionally, I fear that parents are abdicating their responsibilities to teachers, expecting that kids will learn discipline, moral behavior, and academics at school. Rarely do I hear parents involved in any discussion of why Johnny can’t read and what you can do about it, that ad nauseam discussion about the abysmal failure the public school system has become. All of those discussions reach the same conclusion: teachers and schools are to blame.

But when I hear stories of kids who are laughed at by the adults in the home for doing homework or are put in positions that prevent them from ever opening their backpacks before 1:00AM (positions like babysitting all night, working to help pay the mortgage, helping keep the family business afloat, being the sole taxi driver for the entire family getting off and going to work), those are examples of parents who do not show their kids that they value education. If parents don’t value it, kids likely won’t, either. Where is the parental responsibility to hold school up in the home as something important? That would certainly make students’ jobs easier if teachers were supported at home with the attitude that what is being taught is important and worth engaging in.

The Ball Is In…Whose Court?

Now that the results of this poll are out and prominent in the mainstream media, and therefore on everyone’s minds, what are the next steps to make sure that parent and teacher expectations are more in line with each other? Do we move to community forums? Is that equitable? Do we set a state or national precedent for where teaching stops and parenting begins? Is this all a result of the lack of the “public” in public schools, a place where it’s increasingly difficult to stay on top of keeping the community informed and involved in school events? Can we ever get to a place where the community is directly involved in both curricular and extracurricular decisions of the school their tax money directly supports?

No matter what we do, parents need to have a better impression of the problems facing public schools. With informed participants, a discussion about increasing school funding might actually be worth the time spent and it might actually be on the agendas of parents who see what public schools are really like.


1. Shelly says:

[2/10/2006 - 1:46 pm]

I think any discussion of parents and school expectations needs to start with them understanding all the handcuffs and chains that we as teachers have to wear because of the massive amounts of legislation that eats into every school day and virtually every school activity. I’d venture to guess that most parents are not aware of exactly how much of our teaching time is taken up with state-mandated testing and teaching state-mandated curriculum at the time that the state tells us to teach it (and sometimes even _how_ the state tells us to teach it). When parents really understand how much of school time is spent not educating but getting kids able to fill in the bubbles on the test correctly, perhaps we can move to a discussion of what their attitude toward education does to their child’s performance.

Hah… good luck.

2. Matthew Brown says:

[2/12/2006 - 6:52 am]

This is precisely the issues that obscures public discussion of education. Everyone who has finished high school has over a decade of experience in a school, and therefore presumes to know something about schools in general. It is also part of the reason why proponents of vouchers are barking up the wrong tree: In the marketplace, people no more compare schools than they compare doctors. The information to make an informed decision about where to send a child to school is woefully lacking.