Virginia doesn't even make sure homeschool kids are taught.

[Guest Anonymous]

Since we are grading each others papers. You should have written "What a great example, of a home educator." Congrads, on finding a typo. I found one, too.

That is a weird place to put a comma, IT. I'd have said the first version was the correct one. Can you explain why the comma goes in the middle of that sentence, please? :)

[Megan]

Since we are grading each other's papers, you should have written "What a great example, of a home educator." Congrads (sic) on finding a typo. I found one, too.

No, Wolfie's grammar was correct. The phrase "of a home educator" is a prepositional phrase that modifies the word "example" and should not be set off by a comma.

[terranova]

The issues I have with the school system (atleast, the one here) is that there are far too many kids who "graduate" at 18 unable to read, write coherant sentances, interact with adults, learn/work on their own or hold down a job. I've interviewed 17 and 18 year olds fresh out of school who can't spell, have bad grammer, have no social skills beyond their own peer group and expect to earn $20 an hour in retail. School has NOT prepared them for the real world and in many cases, has failed them totally. I have no idea if this is the same in your school districts, but until the system is better here, I won't be sending my kids to school. I would welcome a visit from the Ministry of Education anyday :)

[flojo]

My neices are in a charter school. Its part of the school district. Its better then the school they were going to. The district they live in is the lowest funded district in Utah. The school they were going to was built in the 70's. It had no internal walls. There were sliding partitions between the class rooms. This made teaching and learning distracting because you could hear what was going on in the classes next to yours. In this situation, the charter school is better. The teachers have a year long contract so no rotating teachers.

Anecdotes don't alter statistics. It may be an example of the 17%, it may not. That doesn't alter the fact that more charter schoos produce worse results than better, when compared to contemporary public schools.

[YPestis]

I'm a proponent of public school myself but I'm also fortunate to have gone to decent schools. I find most threads on homeschooling tends to devolve into public school vs homeschool debates which is extremely counterproductive because every poster appear to have valid reasons to support their school choice. It appears our schools are filled with homeschoolers who can't read and teachers who beat their students. I think we need to be careful not to make absolute statements based on those experiences. Bad teachers abound everywhere, whether it is at home or in a public system. Bad students are also everywhere. Even comparing good homeschool vs good public schools, there are drawbacks and benefits. Instead of fighting or bragging about whose choice is superior, I think we should focus on ensuring that every child gets a decent education. This mean regulation and oversight. I would also agree that standardized exams would be a good way to gauge where the child is as compared to their peers. Just as we don't allow parents do abuse or neglect their child, we shouldn't allow parents to leave children ignorant and isolated.

[Rosa]

My neices are in a charter school. Its part of the school district. Its better then the school they were going to. The district they live in is the lowest funded district in Utah. The school they were going to was built in the 70's. It had no internal walls. There were sliding partitions between the class rooms. This made teaching and learning distracting because you could hear what was going on in the classes next to yours. In this situation, the charter school is better. The teachers have a year long contract so no rotating teachers.

The problem - and it's a thorny one for parents, my child is in a magnet school and not the closest neighborhood school - is that instead of fixing things for the entire district, charter schools pull out a little group and try to make things better for them. And because that's cheaper and easier, voters go for it - and then in many cases the system is gamed by outright charlatans. That study someone quoted, showing that most charter schools have the same or worse results? That isn't negated by the existence of a few stellar charter schools.

The idea was we would institute charter schools and then take the best ideas from them into the rest of the public schools. But instead, they are used as tools to weaken the public school system - increasing class sizes in other schools, weakening teachers unions, atomizing parent groups (the difference in PTO support for my son's school and the neighborhood school is SHAMEFUL. Last year I fundraised for the neighborhood school instead, I was so embarrassed by the difference.) And since they have so little oversight, they're ripe for fraud - we've had a few spectacular cases here that resulted in closed schools.

[longskirtlotsakids]

I support charter schools for specialty areas, but hate the fact that they exclude so many other students. The whole "waiting for superman" thing where all these kids were aching and hoping for a decent future, when all kids are deserving of this opportunity.

When I say specialty areas, I specifically mean for underachieving or at risk students. A charter school with a day care for student parents, for instance, or for students at risk of dropping out. The flexible programs can be a lifesaver for these populations. But for elite schools, for the chosen few (which I have seen firsthand mean kids with certain family names) are not fair.

[Austin]

I homeschool my child and support some regulation but not others.

First, of all hybrid schools and online schools are now options when it comes to homeschooling. Online school do not suit children well third grade and under because they need to develop good reading and writing skills before switching to a solely online program. Hybrid schools allow the child to attend school part time but do the bulk of the work at home. Some children do not belong in public schools. My child was injured by a teacher the school suspended her without pay for three weeks and stuck her back in the classroom. That was at an A rated magnet school. Most teachers graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their graduating class in college. So even with certification that doesn't mean they are the most well educated or most highly qualified to teach children. An engineer at NASA even without a teaching certificate can run circles around a high school science teacher who graduated toward the bottom of his or her class. By the way I went to college for five years and also went to vocational school for one year.

Second, every state has different laws and every family is a different size. I will openly admit there is no way in heck I could educate a Bates size or Duggar size family. I have an only child so that is a non-issue. He is a year and half ahead in school. I am also not his only educator he has in the past or is currently been involved in art classes, swimming lessons, homeschool pe, workshops at the science mueseum, homeschooling groups, karate, classes at the history museum, church, and scouts. He also frequently goes with my husband on business trips and he made it to 22 states last year. Had he have been strapped to a chair in a classrooom all day he would have missed out on most of that. Public school is a one size fits all education. If it were a perfect system it would have perfect results.

Third, about regulation. Some states like New York and North Dakota are highly rated. Other states like Texas have little to no regulation. I live in Texas and have no oversight from the state what so ever. Studies have been done on homeschoolers to figure out if more regulation equals better results. Those studies have found that there is no correlation. However, going forward I am actually concerned that may change. I feel there is an attitude among some homeschooling families that "It will all work itself out in the end" or "My child doesn't need to know that". I personally am concerned about that mindset. If you are not educating your child to be his or her personal best I don't think you should be teaching them period. This is the reason I support some regulation. I see no reason why parents should not keep copies of the child or children's work, meet once or twice a year for testing or an educational review, and parents should to use teaching materials that meet state and national standards. I have read much of the Gothard, ATI, fundie curriculum. It scares me. I use the book Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rump. Feel free to read the Amazon reviews. Several homeschoolers complain "It's too much" or "I can't cover ALL that material" It really isn't fair to lump all homeschoolers in the same group. There are good homeschooling families and bad ones. There are good schools and horrible schools.

Well, my husband, who graduated summa cum laude from college as an Education major, can certainly write significantly better than you apparently can. I usually don't pick on those sorts of things, but for someone who seems to believe he/she is so much smarter than educators, I would hope you would have better grammar. Whatsoever is one word, for instance. Hopefully, your child is not relying on you for that particular part of his/her education.

It's also good to know that my son, who is working on a double major in Math and Education and also works 30 hours a week, all the while keeping his GPA above a 3.7, is wasting his time. :roll:

But you know what? Keep your "preshus snowflake" out of schools because parents like you who think any ole' person with a pulse can teach are a serious pain in the ass. You're an offensive jerk.

[RachelB]

If you read what I my first post I did say there are bad homeschooling families. I will not pretend the school system is a flawless system and all children would be better off in it. I do not worry about saying negative things about teachers because in cities like Oakland, Detroit, and Chicago less than half the kids will even graduate high school. If you are a good teacher, good for you. If you are a bad teacher, change careers. I never said anywhere all teachers are bad but I also never said all teachers are good either.

Hi. Since you have taken my city's name in vain, I have something to say:

Test scores at Oakland Technical High School have risen since the economic downturn. Why? Well, parents who were once able to afford private school tuition are now putting their children in public school, increasing enrollment. State funding for public schools is based on enrollment, so not only has Oakland Tech had a recent influx of kids who already had higher test scores, it now has more money to put toward retaining teachers (which has been a huge problem) and improving instruction.

I am being more careful with my data than you are with yours, so I will acknowledge that what I have presented is called anecdotal evidence, not a statistical sample. But one thing this data point suggests is that teachers aren't the problem. Segregation is. Public schools are required to teach any and all students who come to them. Private and charter schools can turn students away on any grounds, ranging from past performance to the expected level of their parents' involvement. In my city, public schools collect kids whose parents have no other options, who cannot come to parent-teacher conferences to raise a stink because they are working two jobs.

Public education is a public good, because an educated citizenry is a public good. Public education in California has been struggling since 1978. (Because nobody could have foreseen that gutting tax revenues would have an impact on our ability to educate children! :roll: ) Since we have failed to fund public education in a way that recognizes its importance, we've made it harder for teachers to do their work.

P.S. I keep telling my college students that they will forfeit some of their audience's respect if they do not proofread carefully. May I use your posts as a case in point?

[Deleted01]

Every type of educating will have some kids who are successful and some kids who aren't. I think that it's more dependent on the child and their desire to own their education instead of having it handed to them, than where their school is located. I don't like standardized testing at all. My sister is a very intelligent woman but she gets test anxiety and her test results do not reflect her mental capacity with any accuracy. Kids are not one-size-fits-all in their ability to grasp concepts and standardized testing can really do a number on their confidence to do anything well.

[Wolfie]

[

Then, I am sure your rocket scientist friend is well aware that NASA has a homeschool program taught by rocket scientists and not certified teachers.

Kevin Kregel a NASA astronaunt teaches part of the program. Apparently, some scientist can teach.

Just because you are an astronaut doesn't mean that you don't have some pedagogy training, or even a teaching certificate/credential. I am also pretty sure that all the curiculum has been reviewed very well by actual educators, if not written by them, NASA is kind of good at that sort of thing. Also, nobody said that there were no scientists who could teach, we said that just because you were top of your field, it didn't mean that you were the best teacher. We also said that just because you were a teacher it didn't mean that you were at the bottom of your field. (I chose not to go into performance for two reasons, I didn't want the lifestyle, and I LOVE to teach. So I went into teaching instead.)

My friend knows that she would not be a good teacher for her children, so she sends them to school. She also is an engineer at a different company, not NASA, so she might not know about a program at NASA. (She is also a Mormon, even if she doesn't fit the mold of a SAHM that so many do.)

[Wolfie]

[The teachers have a year long contract so no rotating teachers.

By "rotating teachers" I generally mean teachers that stay for a year or two, then leave. Beginning teachers are generally not the best teachers out there- they need that experience to be really good. If they work for a year here, a year there, and so on, they don't get the mentoring that they need to be good teachers. It also means that it's very hard for a school to establish a culture because it is totally new every year. Even though teachers have individual classrooms, they do work together, and if a student knows that Ms soandso will be around it provides stability for students. Teach for America is no better, and I feel that it cheapens the teaching profession because it's never intended to be permanent.

FWIW, even tenured teachers work on a year long contract, they just may have tenure, which makes for more job stability overall. (and yes, as I've said before, a bad teacher can be fired. Districts are just often too lazy to do the paperwork. I've seen two teachers who had tenure fired in the last 5 years, as well as a few untenured teachers who just couldn't get the hang of it.)

[Wolfie]

No, Wolfie's grammar was correct. The phrase "of a home educator" is a prepositional phrase that modifies the word "example" and should not be set off by a comma.

This.

If the comma is added it will change the meaning.

[pomology]

Since we are grading each others papers. You should have written "What a great example, of a home educator." Congrads, on finding a typo. I found one, too.

Is this for real?

Look up comma splices. And the word "congratulations" in a dictionary.

[emmiedahl]

I support charter schools for specialty areas, but hate the fact that they exclude so many other students. The whole "waiting for superman" thing where all these kids were aching and hoping for a decent future, when all kids are deserving of this opportunity.

When I say specialty areas, I specifically mean for underachieving or at risk students. A charter school with a day care for student parents, for instance, or for students at risk of dropping out. The flexible programs can be a lifesaver for these populations. But for elite schools, for the chosen few (which I have seen firsthand mean kids with certain family names) are not fair.

Waiting for Superman was a heart-wrenching movie for me because I have had children in great charter schools. These children also had access to fine public schools and we could afford, with massive sacrifice, to put them back in private school as well. Getting a great education in this country should not be so difficult. And that is the problem--sometimes it *is* difficult. However, the movie was biased in favor of charter schools and did not address a key problem with its own argument--that many charter schools are producing worse results than neighboring public schools. That is an important thing to keep in mind before supporting school choice. Some of those choices will be crappy and yet very good at selling themselves. I don't want to have schools be deregulated because I lived in California when electricity was deregulated, and lived through the resulting rolling blackouts on 115 degree days. Our kids cannot be left at the mercy of capitalism. They deserve more.

I have done every type of schooling available, including homeschooling. One of the things I loved about homeschooling in Washington was that I could choose my own curriculum. Maybe all 2nd graders in Washington learn about dinosaurs in 2nd grade and we learned about it in 1st instead because there was a huge dinosaur exhibit at a Seattle museum at the same time. I did not have to sidestep around evolution the way our local schools do, because my house firmly agrees with it. We read books that are banned in Washington schools because I think To Kill a Mockingbird is important. I am not a fan of making homeschoolers follow public school curriculum and learning objectives because in many cases, this would mean a less awesome education.

Another thing I loved was the yearly testing. My kids finished their work in 2 hours every day, 4 days a week. And then the rest of the stuff was cake. We filled our days with outings and playdates. I was worried at first because we seemed to do so little bookwork but those tests every year assured me that we were staying in our 95-98th percentile range. It reassured me that my teaching was good and that my children were progressing in the same way they had in public school. So I appreciated the tests. The only reason I can think of to be against testing is that you cannot bear to know how your children compare to others. And that was not my issue by any means.

I no longer homeschool, but I still believe in it. I believe that a parent can give their own children a first class education and that this option should be open to them because, unfortunately, many schools don't offer that. I also believe in public schools. And I believe, most of all, that a great homeschooler has nothing to fear from a yearly test or other confirmation of progress. In my perfect world, all children would be given a multitude of academic options that are adequate and their parents would choose the one that works best for their family. But in real life, many kids don't have a chance. And I include the many children enrolled in failing charter schools in this number.

[freejoytoo]

I think any parent who wants to homeschool should be trained as a teacher first.

[rewoodley]

I think it all depends on the dynamic of parent and child... some kids and parents make great teams and learn tons, others.... get in to a battle of wills over every-little-thing. I have been to public high school after being home schooled for 2 years after my parents could not afford the expensive private school that I attended, which I went to after I was home schooled up to grade 2. when I entered public school and the private school I was ahead of my peers. I truly appreciated that my mother decided to send me to a public high school though because I had choices as to what I could learn and subjects that I could never have had the chance to take at home. I don't believe that you have to be educated as a teacher to teach your child, when you have a child you are their primary teacher until you put them in kindergarten and if you are home schooling then, if you actually think about it, you can learn the subjects as your child is learning them. (in my experience the curriculum that you buy normally tells the parent exactly how to teach the concept)

[Deleted01]

I think any parent who wants to homeschool should be trained as a teacher first.

If every parent who wanted to homeschool had a clan like the Duggars I would agree with you. You don't have to have culinary training to fix your kid's meals, do you? Go to nursing school to be qualified to apply a Band-aid or an ice pack? Any parent who is striving to provide the best education for their child knows when to look for outside resources to teach subjects they don't feel comfortable teaching themselves. Those resources are pretty readily available if/when I need them. This year, for example, my son is doing biology labs with a group one day a week. I don't have to mess with it at home! No frog guts on MY dining table! :dance: Some subjects don't require me to "teach" at all. They read the material and do the work/lab/activity and voila! they've learned something.

[Spider Burps]

Just because you are an astronaut doesn't mean that you don't have some pedagogy training, or even a teaching certificate/credential. I am also pretty sure that all the curiculum has been reviewed very well by actual educators, if not written by them, NASA is kind of good at that sort of thing. Also, nobody said that there were no scientists who could teach, we said that just because you were top of your field, it didn't mean that you were the best teacher. We also said that just because you were a teacher it didn't mean that you were at the bottom of your field. (I chose not to go into performance for two reasons, I didn't want the lifestyle, and I LOVE to teach. So I went into teaching instead.)

My friend knows that she would not be a good teacher for her children, so she sends them to school. She also is an engineer at a different company, not NASA, so she might not know about a program at NASA. (She is also a Mormon, even if she doesn't fit the mold of a SAHM that so many do.)

Once upon a time, before he died, my grandfather the "rocket scientist" was deputy director of NASA's shuttle program. He knew advanced math, physics, and all sorts of logical boringness, and he was more than happy to try to teach people things. If he had to explain it more than once or twice, however, he would flip the hell out because he just didn't get why someone in middle school, who hadn't learned advanced algebra (let alone calculus) yet, couldn't comprehend his masters level explanations. Intelligence and/or the ability to memorize have little to nothing to do with one's ability to teach. Sometimes the most learned folks forget the basics (or take knowledge of them for granted), which makes many of them worthless educators for all but the most advanced subjects in their field.

[freejoytoo]

If every parent who wanted to homeschool had a clan like the Duggars I would agree with you. You don't have to have culinary training to fix your kid's meals, do you? Go to nursing school to be qualified to apply a Band-aid or an ice pack? Any parent who is striving to provide the best education for their child knows when to look for outside resources to teach subjects they don't feel comfortable teaching themselves. Those resources are pretty readily available if/when I need them. This year, for example, my son is doing biology labs with a group one day a week. I don't have to mess with it at home! No frog guts on MY dining table! :dance: Some subjects don't require me to "teach" at all. They read the material and do the work/lab/activity and voila! they've learned something.

But you can't just assume that all homeschool parents will make great teachers. I'm sure some are and you are but there are plenty who aren't, or are very intelligent but don't know how to teach. Teaching is a skill and I think everyone who wants to homeschool should take a course in it.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Once upon a time, before he died, my grandfather the "rocket scientist" was deputy director of NASA's shuttle program. He knew advanced math, physics, and all sorts of logical boringness, and he was more than happy to try to teach people things. If he had to explain it more than once or twice, however, he would flip the hell out because he just didn't get why someone in middle school, who hadn't learned advanced algebra (let alone calculus) yet, couldn't comprehend his masters level explanations. Intelligence and/or the ability to memorize have little to nothing to do with one's ability to teach. Sometimes the most learned folks forget the basics (or take knowledge of them for granted), which makes many of them worthless educators for all but the most advanced subjects in their field.

This...

It can actually be difficult to teach beginner-level classes in subjects which you have completely mastered to the point that they're natural to you. All of the complexity and the meaning behind everything, how it all fits together and why everything is the way it is, all that stuff, you know it cold, in three dimensions, and it all hangs together. You wonder how can anyone possibly "get" it, if they don't understand all the intertwined references. So you end up turning on the firehose and jumping all around and wondering why people aren't following along.

Figuring out how to unwind the ball of yarn to teach someone ELSE is a skill in itself. You have to find a path through the material that purposely leaves things out, is simplified, and has a good dose of "this is how we do it, just model me for now" in it. Following a good textbook (either with the student or just using it to find out on your own what to teach when) is a good start but even then it's hard work.

Surely any actual engineers or rocket scientists in here have taken math at high-level universities. Odds are that at least once you got stuck in a fairly low-level class (say, one of the early calculus sequences) being taught some some absolutely brilliant researcher (or worse yet, a theoretical math guy) doing his "you must teach two classes a year" duty. Remember how that can utterly suck? When the guy won't use actual numbers in any examples, when he insists on going on for 30 minutes over just WHY it is that 1+1=2, using the absolute theoretical "meta-ed out" to the nth degree "real" "big picture" explanation for everything, because to HIM, thinking over the overall structure of the landscape makes things "obvious, see, it all just falls out from basic principles." Problem is, the students can't see the full picture yet, they can't jump that high. They can't see the full 3D beauty, you need to talk about the shadow of the thing on paper that they first encounter and how THAT works.

Then in a few years, you revisit it looking down from where they've climbed up to and they say "oh THAT's why that was the way it was!" but you can't do that right at the beginning.

Far too often though people will think "the guy who is brilliant in the field is by necessity the best teacher" or "I want my kids to be in the class with the Nobel Prize winner" or even back in elementary school "I don't see why they teach the same subjects again every few years, can't they just learn it the first time?"

[delilahdog11]

The some of the best college professors that I had were ones that had either taught in high school or junior high first because the learned the skills necessary to be engaging, interesting teachers. They had a way of making complex material relatable and they were able to instill a sense of confidence in their students even when we learning difficult material. The worse teachers were ones that had specialized in a specific area as they rarely strayed far from that subject matter and they were also focused on the class learning from their own generated scholarly research rather than have us learn and research on our own. That was one over generalization and not every teacher fits that mold, but that is part of my learning experience.

Also. Charter schools scare me because I think that many states want to privatize public education like what is happening to the prison system. I know in my state, PA, the governor is encouraging charter schools as a way to reduce public school funding and to push towards privatization. The charter school system in DC is a huge mess as the city allows anyone to open a school.

Also throwing around certain areas were most of the kids don't graduate says nothing about the teachers. Not when you don't take in account other factors. How many kids in those areas had to drop out of school to support their families? How are teachers responsible for keeping kids in school? Kids arent dropping out because of bad teaching.

[Austin]

The some of the best college professors that I had were ones that had either taught in high school or junior high first because the learned the skills necessary to be engaging, interesting teachers. They had a way of making complex material relatable and they were able to instill a sense of confidence in their students even when we learning difficult material. The worse teachers were ones that had specialized in a specific area as they rarely strayed far from that subject matter and they were also focused on the class learning from their own generated scholarly research rather than have us learn and research on our own. That was one over generalization and not every teacher fits that mold, but that is part of my learning experience.

Also. Charter schools scare me because I think that many states want to privatize public education like what is happening to the prison system. I know in my state, PA, the governor is encouraging charter schools as a way to reduce public school funding and to push towards privatization. The charter school system in DC is a huge mess as the city allows anyone to open a school.

Also throwing around certain areas were most of the kids don't graduate says nothing about the teachers. Not when you don't take in account other factors. How many kids in those areas had to drop out of school to support their families? How are teachers responsible for keeping kids in school? Kids arent dropping out because of bad teaching.

bolding mine

Thank you! Why does 100% of this blame always fall on the schools and the teachers? Where are their parents? Americans are all about "they're my kids" until they don't want to deal with something.

Every parent is ultimately responsible to make sure their child is educated. I don't care what the circumstances are (homeschool, public, private), as long as the child gets a decent education. Sometimes this takes intense effort. Our learning disabled son would not have received the education he did (he's a high school graduate and is in college now) if his father and I hadn't stayed very, very involved the whole way. We didn't expect the school or the teachers to be able to fill every gap. He was our responsibility, ultimately.

Unfortunately, a great many parents want to do is put the kid on the schoolbus and bitch and moan when the kid doesn't do great or has any problems.

My husband had a conversation last night with such a parent. Her fifth grader is not doing all of his classwork and is missing assignments. Mom sent a note in that said, "[student] needs to stay in during recess and catch up on the missing assignments".

Mr. Austin is the only teacher to supervise the entire class. There are no aides or any other type of staff member to stay inside and supervise one student. He is not about to punish every other child with no recess because this one student needs to catch up on work he's already had plenty of time to do. So he communicates to her that that plan won't work, and he really needs to catch up on this work at home. She writes back and says something to the effect of "I don't think you're understanding me. He needs to stay in during recess and do this work. I don't care how you do it - do what you have to do."

:shock:

So he phones her last night to again explain why that plan won't work and again suggest that the student complete this work as homework (which he never assigns and the only reason any student would have homework is because they didn't do it in school). She says, "You know what? We don't have time for that shit at home. I work all day and bowl in several leagues and anyway, this is on you."

I wish I could say this is a rare circumstance. There are plenty of responsible parents, but plenty who are not. Why are those parents never held ultimately responsible for their child not graduating in the minds of the public?

[Spider Burps]

Austin, you or the Mr. might get a kick out of this story.

My SIL is a teacher at a school for "gifted" elementary students. On the first day of school this year, a student came in with a note from home stating that he would need to leave an hour early almost every day because he has "more important things to do" (like soccer). Fortunately, she was able to get the parents to understand that wasn't exactly possible for several different reasons, but apparently her initial reaction was, "What do they think we do all day? Stare at the door waiting for the bell to ring?" :lol:

Sometimes it really does seem like parents think of school as a daycare for older kids. I have a ridiculous amount of respect for the people with the patience to deal with 20-30 kids all day, let alone their parents!

[delilahdog11]

bolding mine

Thank you! Why does 100% of this blame always fall on the schools and the teachers? Where are their parents? Americans are all about "they're my kids" until they don't want to deal with something.

Every parent is ultimately responsible to make sure their child is educated. I don't care what the circumstances are (homeschool, public, private), as long as the child gets a decent education. Sometimes this takes intense effort. Our learning disabled son would not have received the education he did (he's a high school graduate and is in college now) if his father and I hadn't stayed very, very involved the whole way. We didn't expect the school or the teachers to be able to fill every gap. He was our responsibility, ultimately.

Unfortunately, a great many parents want to do is put the kid on the schoolbus and bitch and moan when the kid doesn't do great or has any problems.

My husband had a conversation last night with such a parent. Her fifth grader is not doing all of his classwork and is missing assignments. Mom sent a note in that said, "[student] needs to stay in during recess and catch up on the missing assignments".

Mr. Austin is the only teacher to supervise the entire class. There are no aides or any other type of staff member to stay inside and supervise one student. He is not about to punish every other child with no recess because this one student needs to catch up on work he's already had plenty of time to do. So he communicates to her that that plan won't work, and he really needs to catch up on this work at home. She writes back and says something to the effect of "I don't think you're understanding me. He needs to stay in during recess and do this work. I don't care how you do it - do what you have to do."

:shock:

So he phones her last night to again explain why that plan won't work and again suggest that the student complete this work as homework (which he never assigns and the only reason any student would have homework is because they didn't do it in school). She says, "You know what? We don't have time for that shit at home. I work all day and bowl in several leagues and anyway, this is on you."

I wish I could say this is a rare circumstance. There are plenty of responsible parents, but plenty who are not. Why are those parents never held ultimately responsible for their child not graduating in the minds of the public?

Because it is easier to blame someone else then to change yourself. In my experience, with the birth mother of my son, she thinks that all his problems will be solved with three hours of therapy a week and that she doesn't actually need to attend therapy or do the "homework" given to us. Wrong. As his parents we are his primary teachers and this goes for any kid regardless of their age. Granted, progress wouldn't be being made without professional help, but it takes both parents and teachers to educate a kid. In the case of his mom she is just too lazy and uneducated to know what to do. I imagine other parents look towards the school system as their salvation, for many reasons, and they get angry when the school system can only do so much for their child.

I also think that focusing the problem on the teachers futhers the drive to cut funding to public schools.

The public schools in my area are shit. I am hoping by the time my toddler enters school that we will have moved to another area, but that is unlikely and we won't be able to afford a private or charter school, however, I have been looking into the Waldorf school here and figuring out how to afford that. But since he already has developmental challenges. I know that I will need to fill in the cracks in his education. I don't expect, nor do I want school to teach him everything. I imagine I will be doing homeschooling even though he will be attending school.

I was shocked to learn in 2010 that teachers in Sweden made $120,000. Now that is a salary that teachers should be making. Their time and efforts are worth that and more. But an educated, well paid, well fed populace is difficult to control.