Today's issue of OVAE Connection includes this article below focused on K-12 - but it has sweeping implication for parents. The crux focuses on the question: who has primary responsibility for student success, the parent or the school? Here's an excerpt from the article:
“In effect, the nation seems to be having two parallel discussions about accountability in education reform.” According to the study, education leaders focus on what schools and educators should do more proficiently to raise student achievement, while the public’s focus is on student behavior and student motivation and parents’ responsibility for helping their children develop the habits and values that ensure success in school. Parents also place more of an emphasis on the role of schools in building communities. (end excerpt)
Just yesterday, I had this very conversation with a friend who's 13 year old son attends school with my 13 year old son. It became apparent in our discussion that she placed nearly all of the emphasis of her son's education - including habits and values - on the school, while I do indeed spend time helping my son develop the habits and values that he needs to help him succeed in academics.
Any thoughts or comments? I'd be interested in hearing what members think about this accountability split. And it seems to me that we in adult ed also have these same issues to contend with: we are in the classroom to teach critical thinking, problem-solving and learning habits as much as we are there to teach reading, writing, and math skills. No?
Will It Be on the Test? Accountability and Public Schools
According to new research from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation, Will It Be on the Test? A Closer Look at How Leaders and Parents Think About Accountability in the Public Schools, parents and education leaders think about and define accountability in education in different ways—differences that may be anticipated to have important implications for the trajectory of education reform. Most parents, as well as most Americans, approve of the goals of the accountability movement as it has developed over the past decade and a half, especially the raising of academic standards and the promotion of students based on the mastery of content. If children are given proper guidance, most Americans accept that most can succeed in school. However, there is a fundamental difference between parents and education reformers over the issue of primary responsibility for students’ success. “In effect, the nation seems to be having two parallel discussions about accountability in education reform.” According to the study, education leaders focus on what schools and educators should do more proficiently to raise student achievement, while the public’s focus is on student behavior and student motivation and parents’ responsibility for helping their children develop the habits and values that ensure success in school. Parents also place more of an emphasis on the role of schools in building communities. One of the discussions most needed, according to the authors, centers on whether the goals of schooling can best be accomplished through giving parents more options and choice about the schools their children attend, or whether reform is best accomplished through strengthening neighborhood public schools. With good arguments and what the report calls “moral reasons” on both sides, making sense of the best option, going forward, will require clear thinking in an open and cogent conversation among the stakeholders. The authors also identify three other areas where dialogue between parents and all the stakeholders could be fruitful: “(1) What should we do when some parents don’t take the responsibility for teaching their children to behave and work hard in school? (2) Do we have to close failing schools, and if we don’t, what can we really do to turn them around? (3) How can we help parents raise responsible children in today’s society, when there are so many mixed messages in the media and the broader culture?” Again, the report proposes frank conversations among all the interested parties to the issue of schooling about how to improve it and who has responsibility for which parts of the improvement. |
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