can parents be held accountable?

Instructivist has a post on "spreading the blame" in which he writes:

Home life has the greatest influence on a child's success or failure in school. It shapes the behavior of the child. It is where values and attitudes are communicated. Home life can be intellectually stimulating or impoverished. Attempts to remedy educational disparities also need to focus on this neglected aspect.

While these observations are certainly true (I always base my case against character education in this exact premise!), I'm not absolutely sure they have to be true.

We have a friend who is on the board of one of the successful charter schools in NYC (I've never been able to remember the name, unfortunately).

He told us that tiny little kids - in Kindergarten & 1st grade - come in with "attitude." They are hard and defended. Apparently they talk and sound like the're 18.

It takes a couple of months for the school to get through the shell, but get through it they do. The kids regain their sweetness, and start to focus and learn.

I don't think this school has any kind of remedy for the kids' home life. In fact, I'm sure of it, because I remember our friend expressing surprise that parents never come to school events, contact teachers, etc.

I think Siegfried Engelmann's philosophy is that you have to teach the kid you get - right?

If the kids you get have parents who aren't able to support their children's education - or are unwilling to do so - then you have to work within that reality.

For me that would mean, first and foremost: NO EXPECTATION OF HELP WITH HOMEWORK. When we talked to the new assistant superintendent she said this principle is an absolute for "turnaround schools." If you're trying to turn a low-performing school around you assume zero parental help with homework.

However, if I had a school full of kids who didn't get "easy" homework done, I'd take this a step further and stop assigning homework at all - or, rather, I would assign homework that would be completed under supervision at school, as "La Salle High School" does:

4. In their freshman year, all students are required to attend study halls during the hour or two when they are not in class. The study halls are also resource centers, which contain many of the books and references needed by freshmen in their courses. In such study centers, emphasis is placed on assisting students with their work. The teacher aide who runs the center is familiar with the assignments that freshmen receive. (This stands in contrast to study halls in other schools, which provide only custodial care during study periods.) Some freshmen who are deemed to be academically deficient are required to attend a separate study skills center adjacent to the freshman study hall. There, the intention is to provide more intense help than is available in the freshman study hall. Together, the freshman study hall and the study skills center serve to initiate freshmen into the academic culture of the school.

5. During their sophomore, junior, and senior years students who are experiencing academic or truancy problems are assigned to study halls during times when they are not in class. Again, emphasis is on providing academic assistance.

6. A few students exhibiting extraordinary behavioral problems are assigned to “supervised study.” In this room, custodial care is supplemented with a strong emphasis on interaction between the aide and the students. The room has only 12 desks, indicating that supervised study is necessary for only a tiny portion of the student population.

7. The school places a premium on student attendance in classes and has designed an effective monitoring system whereby parents are notified by the classroom teacher of class cuts on the same day that they take place.

I don't know how many teachers would be able to require students to do their homework under supervision without benefit of a well-thought out and well-staffed system like La Salle's.

Carol Gambill does, but she's working with kids who, by and large, are doing their homework successfully and are highly motivated.

I have no idea what I'd do if I were teaching in a school in which parents didn't supervise homework, the kids didn't do it, and there was no supervised homework option in the building. I'd probably try to spend as little class time as possible on instruction and as much class time as possible on homework.... ?



are there ways to hold students and parents accountable?

You could do things like fine parents whose kids don't show up for school - I think some communities have tried this, right?

I'm not sure what you can do to hold kids accountable apart from detention.

Kids should definitely have detention for not doing homework; rule should be enforced and consequences should be real.

This is another of my beefs with my own middle school. One of the teachers sends a student around to "check" to see whether the kids have done their homework. Naturally some of the kids simply write that day's date on an old homework assignment, and the student checker marks down that the homework is completed. This shouldn't be happening. The teacher shouldn't entrust homework checking to a student.



update from instructivist

Judging by most of the responses to my post, the thesis is widely misunderstood. I'm concerned with the environment parents create simply by being, i.e.having or lacking certain attributes. These attributes can be any number of things, e.g. providing a loving and nurturing environment conducive to the healthy emotional development of the child; valuing respect for others and teaching good manners; attaching value to education; providing an intellectually stimulating environment even in incidental ways. Contrast this with dysfunction and psycho- and sociopathology as is so often the case, a pathology that poses nearly insurmountable obstacles to education and perpetuates stratification. The thesis does not concern itself with minutiae like school board relations.

In this respect the thesis seems unremarkable.

True.

(So, can anyone tell I'm a little burned-out?)


here's Joanne Jacobs

My book, "Our School," is about Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high that targets low-achieving Mexican-American students. Many parents had an elementary education in Mexico and speak English poorly or not at all. The school assumes parents can't help with homework but asks them to check off a homework log showing that they saw their child doing something. If a student misses two or more homework assignments, a teacher-counselor calls the parents.

Students behind on homework must attend special study sessions during what otherwise would be free time and/or Saturday school. Getting kids to do the homework is a big job in ninth grade. If they do it poorly, that's not a huge problem. Once the work habits are in place, they will improve.

Ninth, tenth and 11th graders have a 75-minute study session at the end of the school day. Tutors are available on request with ninth graders getting priority.

Niki Hayes told me something interesting.

She said you have to establish homework habits in K-5, because the middle school years really are "hormonal," and that's the worst time to try to do it!

I had never thought of that, but it makes sense.