Report Card Day Could Include Grades for Parents Under Proposed Florida Bill

This is crazy. I live in Texas and am having trouble getting my son's teacher to give me enough information so that I can help my son with his school work. I found out this week that the school is not really teaching handwriting anymore. I have been asking his teachers since kindergaten about his handwriting, but was ignored. Now they finally admit they don't really bother with it. I now have a child who can't form his letters properly. The teacher sends out a weekly e-mail on what they will be learning, but so far I haven't found anyone who can understand what she is talking about. She doesn't send home worksheets or anything that they do in class. I have no idea what to study for on the weekly tests. I don't know if he is having problems understanding his class work until I get his report card. I have tried to get help from the school, but they blow me off knowing that I can't do a thing about it. How about we grade our teacher and school performance? I would love to show people what the e-mails look like. I think they may be written in another language.

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About time we held the PARENTS accountable for the education of their own child.

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By adding such a report card you have greatly raised the stakes in judging what constitutes "accountability" in a parent. Although I am utterly of the opinion that many parents do not take responsibility for their children's education, this bill raises alarm bells for me. As many of my generation (late 30s) have observed, what some schools require parents to do these days is not only absurd but in fact counterproductive. When I was a child my parents were not asked to chaperone school trips or work at the school one day a week or work on major homework projects with me. I do not think it is appropriate for a parent to be involved in his/her child's homework except perhaps to make sure that the child did it. Children need to have the experience of being responsible for doing the homework themselves, just as the parent has a job that s/he is responsible for. There were always kids whose mothers were housewives and thus had time to volunteer for the PTA and bake 10 pies for the bake sale, which they would also volunteer at for 8 hours, but there were also working mothers like mine whose job it was to learn a living and there is no way that the latter should be held to the same standard of involvement.

If it is just about making sure your child goes to bed at a decent hour, eats a good meal and shows up to school on time that seems fair enough. It's when you start getting into things that cross the line (see above) that this makes me very nervous.

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Frist of all, I am a parent and a twenty-three year veteran teacher in Texas. Of course, I have opinions about this. Should we grade teachers? Should we grade schools? Should we grade students? Well, guess what? We do in Texas. I know since our wonderful former politican, George Bush went to Washington, we also grade every one in No Child Left Behind. This thinking of performance based testing was started here and taken nationwide through the previously mentioned legislation. Parents may be feeling a small portion of what their child feels daily. Gone are the days of "Leave It To Beaver" homes and schools. Kids today are under tremendous pressure to be successful in all academic areas. They are required to pass not only state mandated tests but now federally mandated tests to graduate. Ironically, the very bill that was to insure everyone received an equal and fair education is indeed the catalyst to encourage drop-outs. Thus leaving many students "behind". Once a student figures out that they do not have the ability to pass these rigorous tests, they leave school as a high school drop-out. Many of these students are of Latino descent, special education students, children of other immigrants with limited langauge skills, or from homes of poverty, abuse, or violence. If you are a white male in America, you do very well on standarized tests. These tests, as all standardized testing, is designed to be racially, culturally, socio-economically, and gender basis. The students who leave our school system often enter our other social systems as a criminal or burdern on welfare, Medicaid, or other state or federal agency. The chances of them EVER becoming successful are slim to none. They are trully left behind for society to care for forever.
Now, do we grade parents? Certainly we shouldn't because every situation is different. We teachers realize this because we know every child is different and there are circumstances particular to that child alone. However, standardized testing does not allow for the individual. It also does not allow for failure. Without a passing rate, you fail. Third graders fail in Texas if they don't pass the reading portion of the test. So schools and teachers feel tremendous pressure to get the scores up. We are so burdened that we (teachers) spend a tremendous amount of time and resources to help bring these low performing students up to the passing rate. We make very little money. I make 46,000.00 a year but often spoend a minimum of 100.00 per month buying supplies for my students who have none or who have parents who will not provide for them. I buy coats, boots, shoes, etc..... for poor students who come to school in sub-freezing weather in flip-flops because that is all they have. I see the parents driving better vehicles than I drive. They are smoking, have tattoos which they can afford and an expensive phones. I have paid for medicine for sick children because the parents were too lazy to fill out the medicaid forms and get their child on the state health sytem. I have bought Christmas for students because they would not receive one otherwise. There is no doubt that this is the poorest parented generation to date. Parents are exhausted trying to make a living. They are overwhelmed or too selfish to care. Children today are like accessories. When I want to show you off, I take you out of the closet and show you around. Otherwise like a pair of old boots, I kick you to the back of that closet where you just hang out by yourself until I need you again.
My parents and grandparents devoted their lives to our upbringing. That doesn't happen anymore. Families do not make sacrifices for their children. They spend no time with them, They struggle to provide for their basic needs, and they are often ignorant as to how to be a good parent.
So, of course, I'd like to see everyone held accountable if we are going to demand from our schools the level of dedication and resources that we as a nation demand. Schools, teachers, and students are stressed out. Shouldn't be parents be held to the same standard? Maybe we need to change the entire system. I, for one, have seen the situation deterriorate in twenty years, not improve. So what do we do about it? We put these people in place that created this problem for us. Maybe we are to blame?

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This is one of the most if not the most ridiculous things I have ever heard .. .so now a parent will never be able to complain about a poor teacher because they know the teacher will be "grading" them! Who works for whom. I live in FL but my son is grown ... I think this will just push more people to homeschool or find alternatives to "public" school .. I did .. I was able to send my son to private school .. none of the bull of the public .. the kids were there to learn and learn they did .. the teachers were paid LESS than public but cared more for the kids. The schools want to control every aspect of the children (and now the parents) ... from giving so much homework that family time is marginalized to what they should eat .. will they be asking the children what was for dinner and grading on that also?

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This is ridiculous! I am the mother of two (boys ages 8 and 3). I drive my son to and from school everyday (because Walnut Creek doesn't have school buses), on time. I make sure he goes to school fed, with a snack, completed homework and with his lunch. I donate money to fundraisers (not the buy something type, but the collection type). I attend parent teacher conferences, open houses, parent education classes, and events like the science fair and spring concert, but for my son's school that's not enough. They expect me to hire a babysitter for my younger son and come in to supervise lunch activities, organize fundraisers, drive for and chaperone field trips (where you must prove you have tons of liability insurance but never ask if you take medication that might affect your ability to drive) or but tickets to the fundraising auction ($75 each). It's never enough for his school though. It sounds like a big popularity contest that will undermine parental authority and make parents and students self conscious about their lifestyle.

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