Yes, get parents involved
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By Esther Cepeda
Turnabout is fair play, and in no arena as much as that of student academic achievement.
So after several years of hashing out policies focused on the quality of teacher education programs and teacher performance in the classroom, it’s only right that the gaze of accountability should turn to parents.
According to Education Week, a new tool to measure the quality of parent-school relationships is starting to make its way into several school districts.
Harvard University and SurveyMonkey, a Web-based polling company, developed a 71-item parent questionnaire that includes inquiries such as “How often do you meet in person with the teachers at your child’s school?” and “How often do you have conversations with your child about what his or her class is learning at school?”
Cepeda writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
January 20, 2013 - 7:31 AM
Ms. Cepeda writes:
One of my education reform heroes is Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an organization working to eliminate the ethnic and racial achievement gap. He recently wrote in an email blast:
“Those who say ‘… a parent’s income and educational level are the biggest predictors of school success’ are wrong. … Here are the real and best predictors of school and students’ success: 1) motivated, inspired, hardworking and minimally skilled students, 2) engaged parents who have a burning desire for their children to receive a good education and 3) excellent teachers with high student-achievement expectations.”
There is a big problem with Mr. Jackson’s statement. His “predictors” are not measurable. He’s replaced something (family income) that can be very precisely measured with something that is purely subjective and not subject to any kind of quantitative analysis. When you don’t agree with a scientific finding, no problem … just invent some pseudo-scientific gibberish that sounds good and you can sweep science under the rug. This is not progress.
What should be measured, and which cannot be measured completely, its how much benefit kids gain from their education. In that sense, a less “scientific” measurement (for lack of a better word) is absolutely necessary to explain differences in outcome.
#2 I get what you are saying but why shouldn’t the measurement of outcomes be subject to rigorous scientific principles and statistical procedures? Much of the research underway in the field of education attempts to do that, let’s hope some of it is successful!
The problem is that when you have a trend (think of it as a graph — something you can manipulate on the x-axis and an outcome on the y-axis) then both quantities must be measurable. If kids get some benefit from their education but not as much as we’d like, the question is, what can you change to reach a better outcome? Even there you have to be careful because the question presupposes a causal relationship in an observed trend. Science is not easy. But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and leave the decisions to pundits.