By Mark
I was talking to a good friend of mine recently (he happens to be the dean of students at my high school) about a student we were working together to "figure out."
Being friends as we are, the conversation meandered a bit, and we ended up talking about my oldest son's current experience as a new kindergartner. I mentioned that he already had "homework," which was essentially him reading to us (or us reading to him) which we'd then sign off on and send back to school with him. It amounted to no more than twenty minutes per day, which we folded into the minutes we'd be doing reading with him anyway.
As a former math teacher and a much more linear person than I am, my friend steered the conversation back to our current ninth-grader: he pointed out that my son was getting two hours a week of outside learning time because he had parents who were willing to set aside the time to read with him and do his "homework" with him. We both lamented the reality that a few kindergartners up or down the street probably didn't have parents who were able to invest the kind of time we could as a family. And then my friend asked the question I hadn't really thought all that much about:
What about the ninth graders who began school nine years ago as those kindergartners up or down the street who had no one reading with them?
It seems so simple, but he did a little math to push the point home. Each week, my son was getting two hours of additional "learning time" at home because we as a family made time for it. After a year of school, that would mean my son would have upwards of 70 or 80 hours of extra learning time. Add weekends, evenings, and the other "un-assigned" reading and math and science we do for fun, and we're talking hundreds of extra hours of "instruction" at home where it's not just parents saying "you go do your homework" it's us sitting with our child to learn together.
And that's just the kindergarten year. Let those hours accumulate over the eight years between kindergarten and high school and we're now talking thousands of hours of "instructional time" or practice or exploration or thinking or reading that my son is participating in. I'm not saying he'll be a genius or even an "A" student, but there is something to be said for all that extra practice.
So let's think about the kids whose families for whatever reason, whether it is lack of time, lack of resources, or lack of awareness of the necessity of such a foundation, are not able to or choose not to devote the same kind of time.
This young man my friend and I were discussing had had a rough life, to say the least. I believe that his parents had his best interests in mind, but sometimes other things got in the way and what might have been hundreds or thousands of hours of extra time toward learning did not come to fruition.
When we consider the accumulation of those hours of learning, how can we ignore the critical role that parents play in a child's education? Let me clarify: I don't think teachers ignore that role… I think that the current discourse about education policy ignores that elephant in the room. Unfortunately, when the elephant is mentioned, critics are quick to shout us down that we teachers are once again trying to blame the parents instead of taking accountability for our own practice.
But consider the numbers: a parent who works with their child a mere twenty minutes per day six days a week helps that child accumulate 650 hours of extra practice time by the time the kid hits high school. That's almost two-thirds of the seat-time in a school year, and doesn't even count the kinds of learning a parent can foster during "breaks." Like my wife and I, many parents work hard to let learning go beyond homework, and the time building that learning foundation is multiplied even further.
My point? First, the role of the parent/guardian needs to be a bigger part of the discourse about education reform. Like with any other "social service," there ought to be a way to compel parents to participate in their child's learning if the child seems to be struggling. What that should look like, I have no clue.
I am not blaming parents for the struggles or failures of their kids. Who knows, maybe in ten years my own kid will be on the verge of dropping out despite my family's best efforts to put in the extra time. What I do know is that if my wife and I are working our hardest and putting in that time every day, and my son's teachers are working their hardest and putting in that time every day, and my future teenaged son still hangs precipitously on the verge of dropping out, then the third party involved–the other elephant in the room–is due his fair share of culpability. We are born with free will, after all.
And that's another can of worms for another post…
Tom, what you articulate is part of the reason I oppose merit pay AND the use of test scores for assessing a school’s “effectiveness.” My current district is relatively affluent, consistently supports levies and bonds, and has a higher proportion of highly educated citizens than neighboring communities. And we have the highest test scores in the region. Sure, I bet we teachers are doing a great job, but we have some pretty well refined raw materials with which to work.
A few years ago I taught in a larger public school district north of Tacoma. The junior high I taught in had the lowest socioeconomic statistics of any building in the district, and the district itself was among the poorer in the region. I taught differently there, as one should with any variation in population, but I don’t believe that the teachers in that building were less effective than the teachers with whom I work today. My former colleagues were just as educated, informed, innovative, and dedicated as the teachers with whom I work now–but the raw material was simply different. If we were to pay attention only to test statistics, it’d be too easy to dismiss those teachers as ineffective.
There were certainly a greater proportion of students who “endured” education then than now. In fact, I think that there may even be some teachers in my current district who ride the success of their students toward a fairly easy payday… their “merit” or “effectiveness” (or lack thereof) is tough to gauge because a greater proportion of students are going to learn no matter what because of pressures/support from home.
I hesitate to head toward solutions which ask me to do more, mainly because that implies that I’m not doing enough as it is. Could I do more? I suppose I could forego raising my own children in favor of spending a few extra hours at school and a few extra hours at home examining student work. That’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make, though. Me putting in more hours simply means the one of me that there is ends up stretched that much more thin and everything I do suffers. Hire more teachers, re-evaluate what a teacher’s assignment/workday looks like, and I think much can be accomplished within non-charter public schools. When we let ourselves begin to believe that the answers to our problems can only be found in charters, we’re writing off a huge population of both teachers and students (I know that’s not what you’re suggesting here, but I think there are ways to innovate within the public school model in ways which show promise and have merit).
You are both right, absolutely. Parents and family values about education are, I’d argue, more than 50% of a child’s resources when it comes to being educated.
But this brings me back to the possibility of built-to-order charter schools.
Try to get my staff to put another hour of teaching into the day and they freak out. And not with enthusiasm. They REFUSE to teach longer days. They even refuse to teach block periods.
A charter school could do that. A charter school could get creative with the funding and fill that void left by absent or uninvolved parents. That extra 20 minutes a day could be spent in school.
This is where I’m going these days with charter schools. I think we can make schools that are equipped to do what some parents can’t or won’t.
And we can argue that family be taken into account all we want, there are still some kids who don’t have families, some kids who have families who spent their last reserves just getting the kid to the U.S., and families who are not equipped to help educate their children.
Traditional schools have found it impossible to step up and deal with this. We’re overwhelmed with all sorts of things, but I think charter schools could do what I can’t.
I think the elephant in the room is even bigger. What happens when many, or most, of the students in a classroom are from homes where education is valued and encouraged? And what happens when most of the kids are from homes where education is simply “endured?”
We all know. When the class, or school, is predominately enthusiastic about being in school, you’ve got a high-functioning school. And vice-versa.