Parents ‘n Schools

The irony is not lost on me, but seems lost on many, that in a 90%+ labour-cost industry like government schooling, so much of what falls in the other 10%- is viewed as “expensive”. By definition, shouldn’t anything in there be “inexpensive”… relatively speaking?
One such thing is standardized exams. In Alberta, called “Provincial Achievement Tests” […]

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When encountering “accountability” in government schooling, parents should not be confused by the word and they should not be comforted by its use. It does not mean what parents might think it means, and it is not used in the same way as it is used in real life.
Important questions to ask […]

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When I hear talk of “increasing” parent engagement with schools, I am compelled to ask how much engagement, exactly, exists at present? How does that present engagement compare with past levels of engagement? How much more such engagement would be optimum? And then, finally… what’s “engagement” exactly, and what constitutes it at school and what […]

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A recent police crackdown on traffic in the school zones of our neighbourhood schools reminds of the inconsistencies of government schools and “the law” that is recognized and enforced at certain conveniences. I do not argue with the importance of traffic safety in and around schools and in school zones. But I do argue with […]

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A recent report card delivered home contained a comment concerning my child thusly: “… performed fairly well… this term despite missing over 10% of classes which I acknowledge at times can be completely unavoidable.”
Now, such a comment can be interpreted in different ways. Could be a mere statement of fact. Could be a disclaimer, setting […]

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Whitney Tilson’s blog is again instructive of the challenges and quality responses from education reformers even within the “blob” of government schooling. In the situation extracted below, a Rhode Island superintendent is responding to online criticism regarding decisions to follow legal avenues to address non-performing schools… legal avenues made available, primarily, to get past the […]

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In the $600 BILLION per year enterprise that is government schooling in North America, if next to nothing is spent on parents as co-educators of their children, the “next to next to nothing” line item in those budgets is “research”. I am pretty sure that more is spent tracking prospects in baseball’s farm system than […]

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When schoolers deliver up studies or statistics suggesting homework in any small or large amount is not helpful to children’s learning, my spidey senses tingle. The paranoid, suspicious side of me (yeah, I got one, perhaps) tends to think it is a way of appeasing that part of the parent population who feel their children […]

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“… despite all the rhetoric about “parental involvement,” you don’t see a lot  of people within education tripping over themselves to encourage it.”
This is a very true comment on Andy Rotherham’s www.eduwonk.com blog recently (in regard to policy in California that empowers parents in regard to school staffing changes for failing schools).
“Parental involvement” is one […]

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(GLO –  Feb 2010 — Written about a year ago now, the venom from last week’s arbitrator announcement connects me to this essay and makes me think that if government schooling actually accomplished all that it purports to accomplish, another 1% in wages would likely be much less begrudged. Venomous exchanges in government schooling are […]

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