sacraig
- The desert
I commend you for working with your kids. It's not easy and it takes a lot of time and effort.
I am a parent of two young kids. I too, along with my wife, make sure our kids are learning, EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. One of my two kids (daughter) is a special needs child.
When I get home at night, my wife and I take turns helping each child. I take certain subjects to help our 12 year old son and my wife takes others. We find the best teaching methods for my son and we implement that. We are taking it upon ourselves to do what schools can't, or refuse to do. I don't need anyone lecturing me on the subject of parenting.
Teachers are not paid enough and I'll be the first to agree with that, but parents shoulder responsibility as well.
My point in all this, is that a lot of parents, do not take the time to do what we do with our kids, and just continue to blame the schools/teachers for their kids' poor performance, and, subsequent poor test scores.
So, back to the point of this thread, now that we have poor test scores, it seems we need to get rid of the tests to make it go away.
I was GOING to be done talking about this, but ya got me!
The key issue with this portion is that a lot of parents don't have a choice. For a lot of parents, a disproportionate amount of time is spent just trying to make ends meet and put food on the table. My wife and I are fortunate enough to not be living paycheck to paycheck, but even then we both have jobs that demand a lot from us (and haven't let up during the current crisis), so I can't imagine how parents who are struggling to feed their kids could possibly put as much effort into educating them.
Unfortunately, the ZIP codes that have a disproportionate number of parents in that boat are also the ones with the most chronically underfunded schools. Indeed, those two things are related since school funding tracks with tax base. So now you have kids in those districts who go to poorly-funded schools and are more likely to live in a household where parents literally do not have the time (or often education) to really directly help their kids excel. It's a vicious cycle.
