In the world of education in the 21st century, No Child Left Behind (
NCLB) has made so many educators look at how things are done. Accountability rings out and is the key to success for school systems across the United States. Daily teachers and administrators make it their
business to ensure students are successful through
rigorous curriculum offerings and
standardized assessments. However, teachers and administrators have a part in education. What about parents? Parents make an issue daily to contact teachers about one thing or another. Several complaints are made from one thing or another. Questions are asked such as:
- Why are my child's grade low?
- Why does the bus arrive so early?
- Why does my child have so much homework?
- Why didn't I know about the school field trip?
Parents are provided with information through parent notes from teachers, school news letters, and other resources provided from the school. However, it is so important that parents understand that students must be accountable in addition to school officials. Accountability is for everyone. Tell me your thoughts on accountability.
3 comments:
These are great questions to answer, and ones that are often overlooked or ignored. In our local newspaper, there is a teacher who does a weekly column and answers just such questions. It is a great way to advise and teach parents good ways of supporting their child's education. Maybe a blog can serve the same purpose, just without the general and mass attention.
When parents are involved in their children's education, kids do better in school. When parents are involved in their children's education at home, they do better in school. And when parents are involved in school, children go farther in school — and the schools they go to are better.
The family makes critical contributions to student achievement from preschool through high school. A home environment that encourages learning is more important to student achievement than income, education level or cultural background.
Reading achievement is more dependent on learning activities in the home than is math or science. Reading aloud to children is the most important activity that parents can do to increase their child's chance of reading success. Talking to children about books and stories read to them also supports reading achievement.
When children and parents talk regularly about school, children perform better academically.
Accountability is at the forefront of educational reform. All are held accountable for their roles in the education process. Students are accountable for demonstrating increased academic achievement. Teachers are responsible to delivering thought-provoking lessons that would enable students to demonstrate mastery of the skills identified, think critically and become life-long learners. Standardized assessments results highlights the areas of deficiency for students while pin-pointing areas of concern for educators. What does this mean for parents? Parents are quick to point the blame and remove their children from schools that are identified as failing. However, it is some of the same parents who fail to attend parent conferences or return phone calls when teachers and administrators are attempting to be proactive in the this process. If a child is not submitting homework, then it is a strong possibility that the child did not go home and practice the skills taught in the class. Therefore, when they return to school and the teacher is assessing whether or not the skills taught was truly absorbed, it appears that the student did not acquire a thorough understanding from that teaching session. Therefore, indicating to the teacher that he/she must revisit that skill and re-teach. This might not have occurred if parents would ensure that students are making honest efforts to complete the home learning assignments. This is time that could have been utilized to move students forward. Now, if you take a child’s cell phone away because it was a distraction for the student in the classroom and that child goes home and make mention of the situation, in most cases, the parents will be out there first thing the next morning. Are the priorities kind of mixed up here! There should be a mechanism used to ensure that parents are making their contributions in the appropriate areas; areas that would lead to academic success. When parents work collaboratively with teachers and administration, it creates a win-win situation. Relationships are established that seeks ways to put students on the right track and keep them there.
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