Saturday, December 18, 2010
How are our high schools doing?
This is a follow up to the Timesrecord article on AYP. In just 5 years, Brunswick and Morse have widened the proficiency gap by 20+% across every subject. How can we close this gap?
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http://www.timesrecord.com/articles/2010/12/20/opinion/letters/doc4d0f9f31b8006205494813.txt
ReplyDeleteAdditional questions
By Kyle Beeton
Published:
Monday, December 20, 2010 2:09 PM EST
I want to applaud Beth Schultz for continuing a conversation about our schools without the attacks I often see in the commentary on our schools (“How are our high schools doing,” Dec. 10). The trend she shows us is not a good one, no matter how you slice it, and Beth offers a number of important questions our school board should be discussing.
I don’t want to take away from the questions Beth offers; they need to be addressed. I would only like to add some more questions that get to the other half of the education equation — the parents and students.
The data shows how the kids are doing, and we can look to see what the schools have done, but we don’t have anything telling us how much time and effort the students and parents are putting in.
I would love to know from 2005-2010 the following:
— How much time students spend doing homework?
— How much time do parents spend working with their school-aged children doing homework?
— What students and parents consider “acceptable” grades?
— How often do parents check grades online?
— What percentage attend conferences?
I know we don’t have this information, and how we get that information is a separate conversation altogether. We need to answer the questions Beth poses about our schools, but we have to remember that education is a two-way street. I feel that without knowing how much time and effort students and parents are putting in, changing what we do in the schools will only have limited effect.
Kyle Beeton, Woolwich