Put Parents on the Report Card

As much as it’s obvious that a family consisting of two educated parents who earn a decent income and own their own home is the ideal situation that consistently produces the best students, most of America falls far short of this model.

It appears that the way we educate our students has hardly adjusted to the fact that family dynamics are far from perfect.

Too often I hear people say that lack of parental involvement is the main reason students are failing and that schools should not be responsible for raising a child. 

Sooner or later...hopefully sooner...the educators will learn to adjust to students that have parents that are not engaged in the education process. 

Schools have a better chance of making a bad student a good student than making a bad parent a good parent.

After reading Assault on Learning, the most promising program was CSAP - Comprehensive Student Assistance Process - an effort to stave off students' deteriorating grades and behavior. The program is designed to apply a host of resources such as intensive tutoring and counseling, as well as identifying learning disabilities or behavioral disorders.

Unfortunately, that great concept has been poorly implemented, but it’s the right step to take in this new world of absent parents.

The only way schools can drastically improve is to operate under the assumptions that parents are not, and will not, be involved. For those parents that are involved, the student will continue to benefit, but for those students with no help at home, if they aren’t getting extra resources at school, they’ll continue to fail.

Now, all kids from good homes don’t end up as good students, and kids from bad homes have proven to succeed. 

But, for schools and communities to use bad parents as the last and final excuse that students are failing, this is a cop out. 

Change the rules, come up with a new way of providing education, do something different. It’s been obvious for too long that the old fashion ways of learning is not working.

But, if you are going to continue blaming parents, put them on the report card, too. It may serve as wake up call at home and take some of the negative burden of bad grades and behavior off the student.