Parents Blame Themselves, Not Teachers, for Failing Schools

Hey Teachers, It’s Not All About You

A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and Stanford University found that 68% of adults believe that parents deserve the blame for failing schools, while only 35% blamed the teachers. The poll also found that a slight majority, 55%, believed that their children were receiving a better education than they did, while 75% believed that the quality of their child’s school was good or excellent, indicating that the Ed Deform movement has failed to sway parents with their sky is falling and all teachers suck hysteria.

While this may seem like vindication for teachers, it is really just another case of blaming the victims. The most significant cause of poor student achievement is social class. Poor kids do worse in school. This achievement gap is measurable at the pre-k level in terms of vocabulary and pre-reading skills.(See Burkam and Lee, and Hart and Risely).

While it is easy to blame parents for not reading to kids, or teaching them good manners and discipline, when parents are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet and aren’t even home for dinner, it becomes very difficult to monitor their child’s school progress or to find time to read to them.

Merit Pay Does NOT Work

See the following snippet from Diane Ravitch's blog: Merit Pay Fails Another Test

Few people realize that merit pay schemes have been tried again and again since the 1920s.

Belief in them waxes and wanes, but the results have never been robust.

Now we have the findings of the most thorough trial of teacher merit pay, conducted by first-rate economists at Vanderbilt University's National Center for Performance Incentives. Many people expected that this trial would show positive results because the bonus for getting higher scores was so large: Teachers in the treatment group could get up to $15,000 for higher scores.

After a three-year trial, the researchers concluded that the teachers in the treatment group did not get better results than those in the control group, who were not in line to get a bonus. There was a gain for 5th graders in the treatment group, but it washed out in 6th grade.

Bottom line: Merit pay made no difference. Teachers were working as hard as they knew how, whether for a bonus or not.

When Johnny Can’t Read or Write No More

When Johnny Can’t Read or Write No More

(To the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)

Huck.Konopacki Labor Cartoons

When Johnny can’t read or write no more 

Hurrah! Hurrah!       

We’ll send him to Iraq once more

Hurrah! Hurrah!

He’ll be useless as a wage slave

Or wind up in an early grave

When we attack our public ed-u-ca-tion

When Johnny can’t think or problem-solve

Hurrah! Hurrah!
He’ll end up with a lousy job

Huck.Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Hurrah! Hurrah!
He’ll be overworked and underpaid

Or scraping by on government aid

When we attack our public ed-u-ca-tion

But, if teachers are allowed to teach

Hurrah! Hurrah!
Free from tests and corporate reach

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The kids will grow, they’ll learn and strive

Their future is better when they’re alive

When we support our public ed-u-ca-tion


Thanks to EdNotes Online for inspiring me with their reposting of the Cathy Black Attack parody