Teachers Fight Back

I just finished another book about schools that except for too many questionable generalizations might actually be useful.  The book is, “The Good School, How Smart Parents Get Their Kids the Education They Deserve”.  The book talks about what parents should investigate about a school and or a particular classroom before enrolling their child. It also advises parents how to check on the progress that a child might be making while in school.

The author’s suggestions will be nothing new to many middle class parents and certainly nothing new to almost all affluent parents.  Affluent parents have been investigating their neighborhood schools for years, and have often asked questions about  teachers, principals, curriculum and teaching methods that are used. The book would be most useful to groups of parents who have traditionally accepted whatever has occurred at their local school, and perhaps have felt unqualified to question school authorities about anything.

I have a problem with some of the generalizations and undocumented statements that are made in the book.  A typical one is found in the introduction, ” We all know that the quality of education served up to our children in U.S. schools ranges from outstanding to shockingly inadequate, with a great number of kids – about a fifth in middle-class communities and up to half in poor ones  – not getting the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life.”

The author often makes generalizations about underperforming schools and about what she considers ineffective teachers. She seems to think that many schools and teachers don’t want parent input and would prefer to have the parents be uninvolved in the school. I think in many cases the opposite is true. The administrators and teachers in underperforming schools desperately wish that the parents would get involved. The author sometimes seems to be hinting that there is a grand conspiracy in some schools to keep parents uninformed and to keep them from asking questions about the school and its curriculum.

I know there are some parents who are overly zealous when it comes to questioning teachers, curriculum, methods, and school administrators. I know this can be quite an irritant to teachers and administrators. I also know that if given a choice, almost all teachers would rather have involved parents than apathetic ones.

This book is worth reading for any parent who might feel inadequate or uninformed about how to make school choices for their children. Unfortunately, the parents who need to read this book are the ones who are least likely to do so.  This is a similar situation to what teachers face when it comes to parent conferences. The parents who could benefit most by showing up at parent conferences are usually the ones who never attend.